New Morning is sitting in a cradle at Bailey's Boatyard in Falmouth
Harbor, Antigua. Fay and Russ are sitting in their house in
Sausalito. Our world is temporarily at rest.

It's been great to return to Sausalito, so different than life on the
boat, but a great place to call our other home. Already we've seen so
many friends that we've missed over the last 9 months and we're busy
catching up on everything happening here. We hope you're enjoying
your home as much as we are enjoying ours.

That's what the odometer reads at the end of New Morning's first
year. Since we didn't install that GPS until mid-summer last year
she's probably got a few more miles on her than that, but it's a good
rough estimate of our first year of cruising.

For the last week we've been working long days in hot and humid
conditions to prepare New Morning for five months of storage on land
(aka "on the hard"). A combination of decommissioning where we take
things apart and stow them away, current maintenance and preventive
maintenance. The tropical sun will be beating down on the boat for
the next five months so we've basically stripped everything we can
from the deck and rigging. Fay has shined and polished all the
hardware and she removed the running back stays and inner forestay
from the mast. Yesterday Antigua Rigging removed most of the running
rigging and the sails. The sails will go to the sailmaker to check
the stitching and hardware so they'll be ready to go in the fall. The
outboards have been flushed in fresh water and the list goes on and on.

Tomorrow New Morning will be hauled, her bottom washed and then placed
in a one piece cradle and strapped to mother earth. This should keep
her secure during any tropical storms this summer.

We're anchored in English Harbor for a few days, quite close to Nelson's Dockyard and very protected. It's a great place to be preparing New Morning for summer storage. This morning Fay went up the mast and removed the running back stays and the inner forestay. Then I went up to inspect the antenna's and some of the rigging. I took this shot of Nelson's Dockyard, with various bits of rigging clouding the view. When we have evening cocktails we try to imagine what is was like 230 years ago when this harbor was filled with British warships rather than pleasure yachts.

Today while sailing from Guadeloupe to Antigua, Fay noticed a "cruise ship" behind us, and two sail boats passing to port headed to Guadeloupe. Upon closer examination I thought perhaps the ship behind us was a military vessel. We watched for awhile and could only see it's bow bearing down on us from astern; and with no AIS target. Finally at about 2.5 miles I called on the radio to see how they would pass and they immediately responded as "Warship Foxtrot 831" and said they would pass to port.
But as they pulled abeam on our port side, they slowed and matched our speed for about 10-15 minutes. While alongside we thought it was interesting that they were not flying any flag, other than a French courtesy flag, and we could read the name "Van Amstel" up near the bridge. Finally they came on the radio and interrogated us regarding our registration and trip plans. Satisfied with the answers they wished us a good passage and turned away. We assumed they were the US Navy doing drug interdiction and found us interesting (but why?).
We Googled F831 Van Amstel and it turns it was a Dutch navy frigate. We still think they were doing drug interdiction, but who knows why they found us interesting.

In any case we're now in Antigua and will dock tomorrow at the Cat Club. Next week Antigua Rigging will replace our Furuno autopilot with a Raymarine autopilot which we hope will be a huge improvement.

We wanted to visit Guadeloupe, but didn't want to take New Morning to
the marina in Pointe a Pitre. While rocking in the wake of one of the
ferries that serves The Saints we were inspired to just take the ferry
to Guadeloupe for the day. So on Monday we went into town about 8:15
for the 8:30 ferry, but it never came. They told us it was broken and
would be there on Tuesday. So on Tuesday we went to town again, and
they assured us it was late, but had just left Three Rivers and would
On Wednesday we changed the plan and went for the 6:45a ferry since it
spends the night in The Saints and we'd be on the first trip. It
worked! So on Wednesday morning about 7:30 we arrived in Three
Rivers. And quickly discovered that Wednesday was Abolition Day, most
of the island was on holiday!

However we were still able to rent a car and did see a lot of
Guadeloupe. Most spectacular were the waterfalls in a national park.
And since it was a big holiday they were celebrating by offering fruit
juice, fruit, cake, etc. to the visitors. Between the time we arrived
and when we returned from the water fall the rangers had dressed for a
party; US national park rangers never looked like this!
The rest of the day we drove around much of the rest of the western
half of the island, but most things were pretty well shuttered for the
holiday. We did find a great restaurant on the ocean for lunch and
made the most of that with rum drinks, great food and wine. But when
we drove through Bas Terre, the largest town on the west coast, it was
shuttered and empty. Overall we found Guadeloupe to have spectacular
scenery, so much more lush and green than the other islands we'd
visited. To get our departure processed today we ended up driving
from the NW of the island to the capital and saw more very lush
countryside; really a beautiful place.
We were surprised that we'd never really heard of Guadeloupe, despite
it having a population of 450,000 and clearly being fairly
prosperous. It turns out that 93% of the tourists are French and
clearly they don't market the island to anyone outside of France. Too
bad because it's got some pretty spectacular scenery and good
infrastructure.

Well it turns out that the cuttlefish picture I posted is not a cuttlefish at all.  What we observed and photographed is a Sepioteuthis sepioidea, or Caribbean Reef squid.  More information and some good pictures here: http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/Ssepioidea.php.  The name is not nearly as interesting, but the squid were still fun to watch and look pretty cool.  They do change their color like the cuttlefish which means we have enormous latitude for adjusting the pictures in Photoshop - we can't get the color wrong because they change color all the time anyway!

We've found some great snorkeling here and came across a large number
of cuttlefish. Fay got this great shot of this fairly rare member of
the squid family. Fay had only ever seen one before in all of her
diving experience. We saw 30-40, with groups of 10-20 swimming in
formation. I added few more pictures to The Saints.

A few days ago I commented that Fay always wins the board games. Fay
would like the record to show that I have won the "best of 3" cocktail
hour backgammon tournaments three days running. Hence, she doesn't
not always win...

In "Where We've Been" I added a few pictures for The Saints.

We've been anchored off Bourg des Saintes since Tuesday. Yesterday we
hiked to Fort Napoleon at the top of the hill overlooking the harbor
and to the north the site of the Battle of The Saintes in which the
British navy defeated the French in 1782. Despite their loss in 1782,
today Guadeloupe and The Saints are French!

This was the only clear day we've had since we arrived, it's been
constant rain and squalls. The town is beautiful, clean, fresh and
being French, has great food. Unfortunately the anchorage is fairly
exposed and has a constant stream of ferry and fishing boat traffic
which has been slamming us around quite a bit. A good dinner tonight
and then we're going to look for a little smoother place to drop our
hook.