It is a Small World – Jolly Harbour, Antigua Edition

Last week we went to Antigua for a skills and mile building course with Miramar Sailing. We booked at the last minute, with a choice of Antigua or Grenada, Miramar were faster to respond and got the business.  As we were in the process of packing I noticed a FB post from sailing friends Catherine and Henry on S/V Mowzer that they had just arrived in Jolly Harbour, home of Miramar Sailing.  We don’t know many people who are “out there” and it was a bit weird to think of the few people we do know in the Caribbean, some of them would be in the same port.  I contacted Catherine and we arranged to meet on the Sunday before our course.

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Catherine and Henry are about 2 years ahead of us.  They sold up and sailed in the fall of 2014 and spent the summer of 2015 in Grenada so they have a lot of cruising experience but still recall the transition.  After a tour of their lovely cat, a Fountaine-Pajot Mahe 36, we hung out for the afternoon in St John’s and we asked question after question about their experiences and recommendations.  Thanks to Catherine and Henry for the data dump!

It was great to catch up in person, blogs and Facebook are great but glimpsing the cruising life just for a few hours was wonderful.  I think we are going to love our time away.

Later in the week we were sailing close to Jolly Harbour and we heard Isbjorn hailing the marina.  Isbjorn is Andy Schell and Mia Karlsson’s Swan 48.  Andy, Mia and Andy’s dad, Dennis gave us the recommendation that directly lead to us buying Kinship.  We never did sight Isbjorn or track Andy down, it looks like they are in English Harbour preparing for the RORC Caribbean 600 race that starts in about a week from this post.

If we bump into people we know at this pace despite only knowing a handful of boats, I suspect our social life might be quite busy.

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