We caught two buses to get to the airport on Thursday afternoon to pick up my parents. The ride across the island offered views of beautiful tropical flowers, unusual palm trees that look like fireworks exploding, and well maintained and colorful houses, and I was excited to share it all with them. A large group of tourists emerged from the airport terminal with lots of bags in tow, some of them obviously Americans loaded up with all the necessary gear for a destination wedding. We waited and waited, and no parents. When we were the only people left waiting for passengers to arrive, I started to wonder if I had noted their arrival time incorrectly, but eventually they appeared from the doorway with only a couple of bags. It turned out that they had been sitting on their little 28-passenger plane on the runway for half an hour waiting for a bus to become available to drive them to the terminal.

We drove back to English Harbour in their rental car, dropped bags off at the boat, and headed over to neighboring Falmouth Harbour to stroll the docks and check out the super-yachts. They were particularly impressed by the Maltese Falcon, one of the largest privately-owned sailing yachts in the world (289’) with a space-age looking rig. Incidentally, the massive yacht was purchased by a fairly young Greek businesswoman for a mere 120 million a few years ago, and we just happened to see her lounging alone on the beach after being dropped off in her space-age looking dinghy, if you can call it that.

Looking over at Falmouth Harbour with the 3 masts of the Maltese Falcon on the far right

Friday we drove to the capital city, St. John’s, to check out the market. There was plenty of fresh produce and fish on offer, and I bought a young drinking coconut for my parents to try. That afternoon we had to move the boat (when the wind blew from certain angles, we ended up in the channel), but we managed to find a spot near Galleon Beach, quite close to my parents’ accommodation as of Saturday. They are in a beautiful villa overlooking the bay with an amazing view, particularly as the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta is taking place and the classic boats are passing by.

View of English Harbour from the villa (smaller boats beginning to race in the background)

Saturday morning we took the boat out to get up close and personal with the classic yachts as they started the race. The older and larger gaff-rigged ones were our favorites. My mom typically gets seasick but was a trooper and is planning to do some sailing with us in the coming days.

Proof that Rindy was out on the water and not feeding the fish

The big guns came out for the final round of the Classics Regatta

Other than that, we’ve been quite a bit of “liming”, which is the favorite past-time of Antiguans and means “cooling out”. My parents have definitely been inducted into the cruising lifestyle having learned to snorkel, eating fresh fish each night, and drinking sundowners. I think it’s safe to say that they are enjoying themselves!