Kelcey Chandler-Yates and Jim Yates present...

UnderSeaPhotoVideo.com

April 15, 2001
Sitting in a beautiful shallow bay on the southeast corner of Antigua. After a long day of snorkeling and diving, we are pooped!!  Conch cooking on the stove and many a lobster left crawling in their "just too distant" crevices, Easter dinner will be conch Creole style!  We arrived into Antigua at 4 am yesterday and went straight to sleep.  We were exhausted after the long night as well picking ourselves past large rocks and reef to find a decent anchoring spot.  I was glad for the million and a half candle powered spotlight Jim had on the fore deck as we pulled in.  The chart plotter was a few yards off!!  After a wonderful snooze, we arrived at customs at 2pm.  When asked when we arrived we told them and they were very put out asking us why we did not come in earlier! -Jim just said, "I was sleeping" and with a disgusted look the guy stamped our passports!  Another pleasant customs agent. The other people we met have been wonderful.  I was able to trade jewelry for a great little hand forged silver set of salt and pepper shakers as well as a cork screw and hat.  She was happy as a clam.  They were probably sitting in her shop for ages!  Not quite the tourist items!  I was happy because she loved the earrings and the shop was really classy.  She is going to think about selling our things for a percentage during race week.  That would free me up to take photos.

April 16, 2001
A stellar start this am at 9:30!! I just could not put down that dam book last eve.  Chris and Nick were still reading at midnight when I finally turned off the light and were up at 10 wanting French toast once again!  Sorry guys it is cereal today-I'm going diving-and off Jim and I went after the elusive lobsters!  Three hours later, we arrived home with one large conch and not a lobster spotted.  It is dusk now so Jim and Chris are trying their luck at feeding time.  Stay tuned!!

April 17th
Stir-fried lobster was the best last night.  They caught a very large slipper lobster and he was very tasty sautéed in a little garlic ginger butter and served with stir-fried veggies over rice noodles.  After dinner, we had a very competitive game of Scrabble.  Nick and I prevailed by over a hundred points!  There will be a rematch this evening.  Today we moved up island a bit and found a very secluded long narrow cove to anchor.  It reminds me of Squaw Creek on Lake Shasta in the fall as the hills are barren and there are many rock cliffs bordering the water. Then again, there are goat cactus and mangroves too! I am baking bread, making macaroons and then we will dive the headland where there is a "sunken rock" three feet below the surface that plummets to 100-foot depth. The currents can be horrendous so the kids will stay in the dinghy in case a parent floats astray! Eric Clapton owns a beautiful home on top of the headland so we will bow to the rock god before we go in!b

April 18
The diving has been wonderful for the past two days.  We were fortunate enough to encounter a "herd" of mongo lobsters of which we harvested a few males. They were everywhere but I must say the biggest one got away!  Jim brought it out of its huge hole where a 40lb grouper watched with interest and handed it tome to take to the boat.  As I was approaching the level of my safety stop, we proceeded to have a wrestling match of which I lost.  When Jim joined me at fifteen feet and looked accusingly at me as he signed-where the _____ is the lobster, I was glad I only had one more minute to listen to him chew me out as he followed me around screaming under water!  There were five foot swells by the time we surfaced to the dinghy and he was still bitching at me as I dumped my weight belt into the boat between waves! I guess I deserved it but I finally told him to shut-up already---it is not as if I felt sorry for the lobster and let him go on purpose!  God he was huge-my hands did not even fit all the way around him by a couple of inches!  Today I cooked up just the bodies of the other ones we caught on the next dive and made lobster Newberg.  Jim and I loved it but it was too rich for the kids so we have leftovers.  By the way Nick and I beat the pants off of Jim and Chris again in Scrabble by 200 points this time-Nick was the word master last night with words like zebra, wooden, fax and horsefly to mention a few.  Of course, when placed on the triple word blocks it added insult to injury!!  Jim and Chris were not up to a rematch tonight!

April 20th
The food, the food-last eve we were invited to a friends boat for fresh pork leg roast-do you know how good pork tastes when you have not had it in ages? -Really good!  Then today Jim the mongo lobster hunter found another one-the legs were as big around as my thumb!  We had surf and turf-steak with ginger soy marinade and grilled lobster-mmmmmmmmmmmm. Even with two other guys over for dinner, we have leftovers-looks like it's lobster thermador tomorrow!  This cruising life is so hard on us-we just have to live out of cans all the time!

April 25, 2001 --- From Jim
The past week was truly spectacular.  I spent the last three days racing at the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta.  About seventy-five vintage boats from near the turn of the century to current production boats made off of old plans competed during three race days.  The harbor at Falmouth was the center of festivities.  Walking around the docks were seen vintage schooners built before WWI and WWII, glistening in the sun with miles and miles of varnished teak.

On the first day of racing both Chris and Nicholas had arranged crew positions on various boats.  Chris was aboard Chance, a recently built classic gaff rigged 40-foot schooner.  They won their class on the first day.  Nicholas crewed on a 65-foot vintage schooner Vixen II, built in 1915.  He spent three days aboard her asking many questions, as one would expect from Nicholas.

On the first day of the race, our friend Nelson, from St. John's showed up to crew on Osprey.  They were short handed so I spent the next three days aboard osprey grinding winches and trimming sheets.  Osprey was in a class of Classic GRP (fiberglass) boats.  It was one of 12 boats built after WWII for the Naval academy at Annapolis.  It was on these boats that all midshipmen learned to sail at the naval academy.  They are 42 feet overall, 30-foot waterline with a deep heavy keel.  It loves to point up wind so well that we often had the lee rail under two feet of water.  It is not a question of staying dry on this boat but rather how wet were you going to be.  We had a crew of seven but were still a bit short handed after our win on the first day so we asked Chris to join us for the rest of the race.  We had a blast.  More than once we had the huge J Boats like the 133-foot Endeavor come barreling up behind us and go past as if we were standing still.  We took first in our class the first two days and a second on the reaching course on the third day.  It was good enough to win the overall first for the Regatta for the Classic GRP Class.  Lee and Larry the owners of Osprey are lovely people as were the rest of the crew, Nelson, Steve, Larry and his wife Barbara.  I learned a great deal and had fun to boot.  On the third day, we witnessed one of the two crashes that occurred during the regatta. White Wings and Wild Horses, two identical W-Class Sloops ran into each other on turn two of the last race.  They did at least a hundred grand of damage to these spectacular boats.  Luckily, no one was injured. We will stay in Antigua through next week, which is deemed "Race Week" - here the new race boats will compete and our friend Floyd will join us for the week.  He will be racing again on the boat Lost Horizon.

May 3, 2001
Currently we are in the middle of Antigua race week-very exciting!  Very busy.  Chris is on the yacht Septered Isle who is currently in 8th place overall in the fleet!  A beautiful boat and his first experience working the foredeck of a race boat.  On the other hand, Floyd and Kelly from the Lost Horizon crew are staying on the boat.  Last year they won 3rd in the over all fleet, however the times for the small boats are not accurate right now so we can't tell exactly where they stand in the over alls but they are winning their class by 7 points! -That's great!  So until next month---.and thank you for all the e-mails!