In this video, 36 Hour Passage Sailing St Lucia to Antigua and Barbuda Non Stop 2020, we depart Rodney Bay St. Lucia and sail for Antigua and Barbuda, a 36 hour passage up the windward Islands, skipping the French islands Martinique and Guadeloupe due to Covid-19 lockdown and restrictions. Antigua is part of the Caricom bubble and we are allowed to go there if we can present a Negative Covid-19 PCR test result. On passage we are visited by a playful pod of dolphins and Dan shares how we adjust our rig to point higher in a Close Hauled upwind sail. #sailingtowindward #caribbeantravel #sailingchannel

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In August of 2017 we sold everything and moved aboard Balachandra, a 1986 C&C44 sailboat, then sailed it over 300 nautical miles to Halifax Nova Scotia to spend a cold Canadian winter in the frozen waters of the North Atlantic. Sailing Balachandra is our YouTube sailing vlog inspired by other great channels such as Delos and La Vagabonde, which documents the sailing adventures of myself and my partner Nawal as we navigate the globe. We also dive into lots of DIY boat projects both above and below decks, and share with you all of the pros and cons of living aboard full time. Sailing Balachandra is published weekly so please subscribe so you don't miss out on future videos!

Closed Captions (CC):
in this episode we hang out in rodney

bay st

lucia then we depart on a 36-hour

passage

up through the windward islands all the

way to antigua

and barbuda we enjoy some fantastic

sunsets

and are escorted by a very playful pod

of dolphins

last time on sailing bellachandra we

shared with you

a list of 28 things we carry on board

that we just can't live without

if you're new to the channel hi i'm

noelle and i'm dan and we're sailing

bella chandra

we sail from nova scotia canada all the

way to the caribbean

and have been cruising now for a year

that's right and if you haven't

subscribed to our channel yet just go

below this video

look for the big red subscribe button

press that button

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so

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we left st lucia last night around two

in the morning

sailing for antigua it's about a 30 to

36 hour sale from

st lucid antigua and so leaving at

in the middle of the night puts us into

antigua around midday

so that we can get our anchor down in

daylight that's our goal

so right now we're just passing

martinique we had a pretty good sail

last night we were rocking out at about

uh seven and a half knots we got up to

almost eight knots at one point which is

pretty good

we have one reef in the main worried

about squalls and everything but here

behind martinique

things are really calm right now we're

only doing about five knots but still

five knots is pretty good for us

i don't know considering taking a reef

out but

you never know when the wind's gonna

pick up so i do

morning bubble good morning

uh

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uh

oh

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ah

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uh

so

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we had a really good day today we're

headed towards guadalupe

this is dominica behind me we saw

dolphins

yeah the wind died as soon as we got

behind

dominica here these islands are like a

big wind barrier so

you sail really hard in between them and

then when you get to the next island you

everything just kind of dies you have to

turn on the motor

so we're about to sail into the evening

for the second time

on this trip and it's going to be dark

and we're going to cross the gulf

between dominica

and guadalupe which is supposed to be

a stronger more i don't want to say

violent

but it's definitely like the conditions

we'll pick up there

and we're going to be doing it at night

so we're a little nervous about it but

we're going to try to get some easting

in so that

maybe we can ride the wind downwind

rather than

finding it upwind and uh once we get

behind guadalupe it's just going to die

again and we'll do motoring and then

and then we come out the other side and

we'll be on our way to antigua

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we are on the final leg of our 36 hour

passage

from st lucia to antigua in the

caribbean

it's beautiful today this is our second

night doing uh

alternating watches just woke up had

some breakfast

beautiful day got the fishing line back

out and antigua

is just on the horizon we should be

there maybe midday and do our customs

check-in

and show that we have negative pcr tests

which we got done back in st

lucia so yeah we're excited to get to

antigua and explore and share that with

you guys

one thing that happened as we got closer

to antigua just as we

came off the north tip of guadalupe was

that our wind angle to arrive

in english harbor antigua would be

really really tight to the wind

balachandra sails really well into the

wind even when it's tight to the wind

but we're always playing around with our

mainsail trying to get the very best

trim for upwind sailing

for getting the best speed out of the

boat which is always a challenge

but we managed to get that done today

even though we have a 100 jib

if we had a larger jib i'm sure we'd be

going faster but we were able to

do this by getting the main 10 degrees

off

the center and you want to sheet in your

jib as much as possible really get it

tight

so that you can balance directly into

the wind and try to get the best wind

angle that you can with your boat

so for us that's that's pretty pretty

close to the wind but

i've seen some boats do much better of

course you can always motor

and if you turn your motor on you'll you

always point even higher

you notice that we have a single reef

and that's from last night

when we sail at night we usually throw a

reef in especially here in the caribbean

because you never know when a squall is

going to come up and you can't really

see them

you can turn on your radar and if the

moon's out you can see

squalls but it's just become something

of a practice for us to

leave a reef in at night and since we're

so close to port it seems like kind of a

pain to go and take the reef out at this

point so we'll just leave it in

until we get there

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all right we've arrived at antigua and

we're here it's awesome this is

english harbor it's the only place right

now in the caricom bubble

where antigua will allow boats to arrive

and check

in so right now we're staying on board

and waiting

for health and wellness officials to

come out and clear us for

covet 19 and then we can go to the

customs office

and do our official check-in and then

we're here this port elizabeth is

actually a park

it's very beautiful there's beaches

there's like a historic fort here and

some other stuff it does

cost her night to stay here so we don't

know what we're going to be paying for

that

but we'll probably stay here in the park

for a couple nights and then we'll

probably move over to jolly harbor or

something but

excited to be in antigua

thanks for watching if you enjoyed this

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thanks see you later

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wow