Yesterday evening we lost sight of land as the volcanic islands of the West Indies receded astern. Our moorings in Heritage Quay were in the island's capital - St John's. A British colony from 1632 to 1981, Antigua has a resident population of some 65,000. Nelson served for three years on the island as a young captain, and English Harbour, with its well-restored Nelson dockyard, remains a favored bolt-hole for sailors, especially in the hurricane season. For the English of more recent times, the island is appreciated as the home of cricketer Viv Richards: the bat with which he scored the fastest century is on display in the island's museum in St John's.
The island took its name from an Old World statue of the Virgin Mary in Seville cathedral, Santa Maria de la Antigua. Today we made a respectable average of 13 knots sailing Northeast from the New World to the Old, benefiting from the North Equatorial Current as we left Antigua even as the trade winds picked up against us. A day of rest and relaxation at the start of our voyage, with an azure blue sea and shoals of flying fish beneath a clear sky with the cumulus parallels produced by the trade winds that have been a comforting sight to sailors in these latitudes for centuries.
