Beautiful Barbuda was pretty much destroyed by hurricane Irma in 2017 and the island and its 2700 inhabitants are still making baby steps towards recovery, the original school is not yet re-opened, Red Cross and Good Samaritan tents still dot the foreshore but despite all this the locals hang on, the frigate birds have returned to their colony in the damaged mangroves, the fishermen still ply their lobster trade (for amazing prices – $10USD for 5 lobster), the water is still an amazing blue, the sand a beautiful pink/white and the snorkeling was some of the best we have seen here in the Caribbean with a massive spotted ray, nurse shark and lots of little fish and lobster. In this episode we also haul-out in Jolly Harbour in Antigua to touch up our anti-foul and replace some through-hulls and get a 1000 hour service for our motor before our big Pacific crossing coming up soon.

We are the Robbins family sailing on our boat named Nikau.
We are a family of 5. Our 3 kids are doing NZ correspondence school on board. They are growing to love it! What’s not to love about 3 hours of school a day and then a different playground for the afternoon every day!

We’ve traveled from New Zealand to Sardinia in Italy to pick up our boat and we plan over a few seasons to sail her back to New Zealand.

We hope you enjoy following us on our adventures!
We would love to hear from you. Especially if you are interested in doing something crazy like we are! Maybe we can help answer some questions you have?

Thanks and enjoy.

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