Since the Caribbean 600 finished I have been working through a list of maintenance tasks and getting her back up to scratch for the next flogging around a bunch of Caribbean islands. The race was a real slog and I am not excited about a repeat performance next year. The result was ok but considering 90% of our class retired I was pretty disappointed with the whole thing. However the old girl prevailed and there was plenty of beer on hand at the end, before I knew it the total lack of sleep and four days of getting soaked had been forgotten.
Fortunately we didn’t sustain many breakages, just a couple of small ones not worth mentioning but we did a pretty good job ripping up the A3. Probably pushing it a little hard but that’s the way we roll! The varnish took a bit of a beating with lines running over the side and general chafe issues which are impossible to avoid when doing things quickly in the dark. So at the moment I am getting it all sealed up again ready for the BVI Spring regatta starting at the end of the month.
All the winches need servicing and as you can imagine the boat needed a really good cleaning. Unfortunately there has been a pretty bad drought in Antigua the last couple of months and it was four days after us arriving before we had any water and I could wash the boat down.
I am really looking forward to getting back up to the Virgin Islands again now and will probably sail up at the end of next week. A change of scenery is good and as we seem to have come to a point in the season where the wind has eased significantly, the BVI is always better for some nice trade winds to cool things down.
