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.