Our long flight home gave us the opportunity to reflect on our months sailing in the Caribbean. We really had great fun sailing in consistent 20 knot + winds. We gained great experience from extended days continuously at sea rotating 2 person watches every 3 hours. This gave us the opportunity to deal with all aspects of sailing as a small team. Our night sails in the Caribbean often brought heavy squalls leaving the pair on watch to reef the main or pull in the headsail in 35 knot winds and driving rain. Obviously when we were all working hard it was difficult to picture and document it. This may have created the illusion that our trip was merely a tropical holiday. We did however sail over 1700 nautical miles in 4 weeks heading as far east as Barbados and as far South as Trinidad whilst being over 150 miles from safe haven on our trip up to Tortola. These are not normal places to visit for traditional Caribbean sailing. The intensity of the sailing and enthusiasm of the students and instructor made us all learn how to get the most out of both the boat and the crew whatever the conditions.
We enjoyed 'One more night' in a Karaoke bar in Antigua before the flight home. This was not like a karaoke bar back home where people are reluctant to get up and sing, here people were fighting over the mike to sing the next Bob Marley song regardless of whether or not they had a note in their head. When the bar closed and we were finally ushered out we spent a few hours on one of Fiona's friends 50ft cruisers and debated the purpose of life.
We arrived in the Isle of Wight for our STCW95 training on Saturday. We were all in bed by 20:30 on Saturday evening but managed a lovely walk around Alum Bay overlooking the Needles on Sunday. Its strange not to be constantly swaying and having so much space!
First Aid Champions - Noel and his sore arm; Niall is poorly; Hugh needs saving; Hugh has a new friend; 1 2 3 drop!!; Noel saving lives.
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