Antigua

Well, we have been in Antigua now for 16 days.  We are staying at Antigua Slipway and they pulled the boat out last Monday. We had them paint the bottom since we had it out of the water and it really did need it as you can see from the pictures.  We found a guy who came highly recommending that is working on the engines.  His name is Mel, so he must be an all right guy.  He has one engine pulled and is working on rebuilding the transmission.  It looks like we may be another week on the hard.  

It was nice because we stayed in a hotel Monday through Thursday so we could keep out of Mel's way while he was working.  That was a challenge to find a place that would let us bring the dogs but we stayed at The Lodge which is where the sailing academy is.  It was really strange staying off the boat though.  We also rented a car for the week and toured the island.  The roads here are really bad and they drive on the left.  We were out in the middle of nowhere and hit a pothole and actually blew two tires.  So we had to call the rental car place to help us.  But they gave us a different car and we went on touring the island.  It is a very nice island and Wes really surprised me because he said he wouldn't mind living here.  That's the first time out of all the places we have visited so far that he has said this.  

We are right across the bay from Nelson's Dockyard which is a really cool place.  They took all the original buildings from the old fort and have refurbished them and now use them for different things.  Like customs and immigrations are in one, they have a hotel in another, a museum, a bakery, a restaurant, and a sail maker.  Being that this is there off season, a lot of places are closed.  I guess they have a huge Regatta here in April and the whole place is packed with yachts from all over the world.  But right now it is really quiet here, which is kind of nice because we are able to get things done a little faster (if anything can be considered fast here on the islands haha)  

 

We also replaced all 7 batteries because the old ones just weren't keeping up with everything.   It would be great during the day because of our awesome solar panels but as soon as night hit, it would just drain the batteries and the fridge and freezer weren't staying cold.  So Wes got all of the new ones in and rewired everything so he could put in an isolator to switch from the starting batteries to the battery bank.  Everything works great now and I'm very excited because I can use my Keurig again.  

We hiked up to Shirley Heights and these were taking from there:

Nelson's Dockyard:

A couple of the beaches we visited:

This is called Devil's Bridge-pretty cool place:

Before

After

This was taken from our boat when we were anchored in the bay-I think he was actually posing for me.