Saturday 18^th April 2026

30 miles west of St Vincent

Wind: NE 4. Barometer: 1013

Distance to Antigua: 212M

Why does it always have to be a race?

I’m on the way from Grenada to Antigua. I have 3 ½ days to do it. I should be all right, it’s 350 miles, and the trade wind is obliging with 18kts of close reach. Of course, the Caribbean Current would rather I went to Costa Rica – and, I must say, I would have no objection, but my Grandson, Ben, is flying to Antigua on Tuesday, so that is where I have to go.

By Tuesday.

I was supposed to leave yesterday. My youngest son, Hugo, had just flown back after three weeks of hammering up to Martinique and dawdling back through the Grenadines (and yes, we did have dinner at Basil’s Bar on Mustique and lobster on the beach in the Tobago Cays.)

Actually, it was just as well I had Hugo with me, because the anchor windlass packed up on the morning after we arrived in the middle of the night in Bequia blithely paying out 85m of chain.

So that meant a morning on the dock at Spice Island Marine getting it fixed – and then the dentist to get a bridge fitted to fill the gap where a baby tooth collapsed (at the age of 77!)

Except, when I arrived on time for the appointment, they hadn’t finished making it. Come back tomorrow. This was particularly annoying because I had rushed my lunch with the three Canadians from the catamaran next door.

So, one way and another, I was a full 24 hours late in leaving (even if it did mean the Canadians gave me all the fresh food they couldn’t leave on the boat or take back to Vancouver.)

*

Doomscrolling, they call it. Hugo was always telling me off for wasting my life away on Facebook.

I would tell him it was work – if I found a sailing post that I had already addressed in the blog, I could post a link. It’s called “traffic”.

Except that somehow, he would always catch me looking at Trump and his latest madness: There’s just so much of it, and the more you click on it, the more you get. Half the time it was AI, said Hugo (how did he know?)

And now I have been caught out good and proper. Late at night (it would be late at night – Trump always posts late at night, it’s an age thing), I saw a post about him being so pissed with the Pope calling him out over Iran that he went and cancelled an $11million federal grant to a Catholic children’s charity in Miami.

Now, admittedly the Miami Herald, the Daily Beast, CBS and a whole lot of other news organisations, ran the same story, but I got pulled up by an Australian sailor and Trump fan who pointed out that in fact the funding was pulled back in March – before this latest spat.

The Aussie called me John “Cut and Paste” Passmore and said that I, of all people, should know better.

He’s right of course. Must fact-check. No more sharing in the small hours. Hell, no more doomscrolling in the small hours.

But it is addictive, isn’t it?

Anyway, I’m suddenly finding myself a whole lot busier. Having Hugo aboard for three weeks meant that my digital education has taken a giant leap forward. For one thig he got out the GoPro which I bought more than a year ago, completely failed to understand and put away in the focsle to rot.

Now the plan is to accompany the blog with video, and we certainly filmed a lot, although he insisted I should film myself doing interesting things – reefing, hoisting the Super Zero (the wrong side of the headsail sheets), pulling up the anchor by hand. There is a good ten minutes of this, filmed from behind and featuring two straining bottoms.

I take a different view: There are any number of hugely successful YouTube sailing channels featuring regular high-quality video. Steve and Janet of Sailing Fair Isle used to work in television. Riley and Elayna with La Vagabonde send theirs off for professional editing every week. I can’t compete with that – and so I shouldn’t try.

What makes the oldmansailing blog special is that it’s written – and there are people who still like to read. – and some are kind enough to say they like my writing. But also, I notice that some of my YouTube videos get a lot of views even though they show not much more than the boat going about her business at sea. I can understand this: I spend hours watching the waves (it’s better than watching Facebook Reels). So I propose to record the blog posts and add them as a voice-over to whatever is happening out there.

Right now, what’s happening is that we’re clipping along at five knots in 17kts apparent 30 miles off the coast of St Vincent.