After a restless night sleeping under the stars, I awoke the others on the first shift at 2 am.  While Henry prepared breakfast, el Capitán and I pulled up anchor by 2:30 am.  The full moon was only days away, and as the moon set toward the horizon it began to peek out from the scattered clouds. 

As we sailed out past all obstacles of land toward the open ocean, the moon finally set.  Although dawn approached, it got darker first.  We sailed all by feel.  Every once in a while the waves would unknowingly, yet suddenly slosh over the leeward rail.  Dark yes, but delightful.  We moved quickly away from the lighted hills of St. Kitts and slowly approached our still unseen destination – the older, more low-lying island of Antigua.  Meanwhile, the stars grew brighter and more numerous.  Jamie and I made out constellations we hadn’t seen all trip. Finally, Venus rose in the east bright enough to cast its own shadow until the sun finally began to shine through. We saw it rise, then fall, rise, then fall below the horizon as we went up and down a smooth five-foot sea.  

Seven hours after sunrise we finally sailed into a calmer sea in the lee of Antigua.  For the last two hours we tacked on all the right headers, sailing smoothly into Jolly Harbor.  At the customs dock, Henry and I awarded ourselves with our first fresh-water shower in weeks – under a hose spigot.  Meanwhile, Jamie had to embarrassingly admit to the customs officer that those were indeed his crew soaping up on the dock and awkwardly bending under a hose faucet to clean off. The custom’s officer remarked, “What is the name of the boat?”, then looking out the window and pointing at the dock, “Oh, so those must be your guys.”

The showers were glorious indeed, but they could not compare to the salty rum and cokes on a desolate white-sand beach an hour later.  We stayed for a half-drunken swim, where we watched the sunset over the islands we had just sailed from 18 hours earlier.  The islands of the clouds - Nevis, Statia, and St. Kitts – as they were known, stood 60 miles to our West.  Now their cloud-covered volcanoes were a thing of the past.  But our future only looked up.  The full moon approached and an unexplored land was ours to be had. 

There was something incredibly satisfying about having just manned a ship that distance.  And now to look over the now red-lit ocean we just conquered, while reflecting about the unknown of our future on a new, even more beautiful land.  This in a way is what this trip was about: constantly moving forward, constantly exploring, and conquering all that came our way.  In a trip through the Caribbean Islands the future is always uncertain.  But knowing that the future is always bright and always ready to be shaped made for the experience of a lifetime.