I've been feeling a bit lonesome as Christmas looms, and after dinner to cheer myself I said to Randy, "I just love winter in Antigua." He replied, "Yup, there's no SHow to SNovel." There's nere a sniff of show to snovel in Barbuba either, which is where we spent the last couple of days. Lots and lots of sand though.

Time again to try somewhere new, so we hauled out the charts for Barbuda - about 30 miles north of Antigua - gassed up and filled the water tanks in Jolly Harbour on Friday, and got ready to go. I was driving the boat out of the inner harbour while Randy sorted out other sailory things, and I felt compelled to say, "there's something wrong, I'm feeling a whumping vibration up through my feet."

"Ah, that's nothing," says he, taking the wheel. Then he says, "There's something wrong, I'm getting a bad vibration," and sure enough, it was steadily increasing to a bizarre upward whump-whump-whump. A big pile of junk on the prop, or maybe the prop had lost a blade? It felt nasty, big time. Randy spun the wheel and we headed back to the dock.

Just as Randy's spinning the wheel, someone ashore comes on the VHF and barks "did you feel that? that was an earthquake!" We were so relieved. Nothing wrong with the boat! Just an earthquake!! Randy spun the boat around again, and we headed out directly toward the active volcano on Monserrat before we made the right turn toward Barbuda. The earthquake - a 7.4 on the old Richter - was centred underwater north-north-east of Martinique, did shake the volcano up a bit (see www.mvo.ms), but so far, the volcano hasn't done anything spectacular (recently), and everyone in the area is hoping that it stays that way.

On we go to Barbuda. Barbuda is just a bit smaller than Antigua, but part of the same country. The Antigua bit has most of the people, houses, cars, development, money, hotels, etc, etc., and the Barbuda bit has a lot of quiet, empty, natural beauty, the largest frigate bird colony anywhere, and an 11-mile pink beach that actually goes on a lot further than that if you keep going around the corners.

We anchored off the beach in Low Bay. There's one building on the shore, which will likely disappear during the next hurricane. The strip of beach and land between the Caribbean and the giant lagoon inside is narrow enough to throw a rock across at some points. Those would be the points that turned into impromptu channels during hurricanes Luis and Donna. One channel cleared to a depth of 21 feet. Not a good area to build a hotel.
Outside of that building, it was just us, the frigate birds and a few pelicans. We decided it was a clothing-optional beach. At night, we lay on deck and marvelled at the stars. The glories of the night sky make we wish I was more spiritual, but mostly we tried to identify constellations, and then I got thinking about all the crazy cosmology papers we used to get when I worked for the Can.J.Phys, and how too much pondering on the stars makes you crazy. We generally go to bed early. Best not to mess with that stuff.

On Sunday, we met up with George Jeffery who took us to the north of the island to see the frigate bird colony. Thousands of birds hanging about in the mangroves, the males very visible with incredible scarlet balloons that they blow up and whack with their bills to make a drumming sound to attract the females wheeling overhead. Looks and sounds like it would smart! Incongruous, prehistoric looking birds: like shags, their feathers get wet, so they don't ever land in the water. Bad thing for a water bird, eh? George says that the islanders eat them, but not that often.

What do they taste like? "Fishy," says George, "but they have nice breasts."

One of the stops on the tour was to have a look at a huge bell buoy, hard aground in the lagoon. George tells the story that some fishermen found it floating outside, and they dragged in into the lagoon, salvaged the solar panels and other bits, and there it sits. Randy's scratching his head, AM52, he thinks, AM52, I know this buoy. Sure enough, George tells us that it's the buoy from Grampus Rock, off Betty Island on the south shore of Nova Scotia. We promised to send him a copy of the chart, so he'll know just how far AM52 had come. Maybe via Spain and the big circle around the Atlantic. It's now sitting happily in about 4 feet of water, and George brings the tourists around and tells them the tale of the wandering buoy. He's a lovely man, George, and if you come to Barbuda, give him a call. He knows everything about the place. He has 8 kids, 6 of whom have gone to university. One of his daughters has 7 boys, so she's excused. He's a happy man, fishing and being a guide for people like us, living on a clean beautiful island where there's no private ownership of property. We had a great day with him.

Wind kicked up, and after a rolly night we headed back to Antigua, and ran into Brits Graham and Ann on "Rasi" in Jolly Harbour. We'd met them in Grenada last year, and we had a drink together before we headed out again. We felt connected to normal cruising people again! Great stuff.

Weather window was good, and we'll do anything to avoid going back to immigration for another extension, so we headed for Guadeloupe this morning (Wednesday, Dec 5). Lovely sail, 8 hours, saw a whale spouting for about 15 minutes, a porpoise surfaced beside the boat and got me all excited for a few seconds, and I spent the rest of the time staring purposefully at my fishing lure dragging behind the boat. I devised this clever plan that involved Randy having sardines for lunch and then soaking my cedar plug lure in sardine oil before throwing it to its fate. Smelly, but unsuccessful (we had no other bait, but I'm sure that if Randy had stapled a couple of sardines to the cedar, wrapped it all in bacon and trussed it up with dental floss, then for sure we'd be having fish for dinner tonight instead of so-so steak. That's all I'm saying).

Two weeks in French territory coming up. Laundry stories will be postponed in favour of food, glorious food, but maybe not fish. Stay tuned.