We are now back in English Harbour, Antigua after spending a really fabulous ten days with our dear friends Libby and Adrian, now they have left and it seems strange not to have company onboard. Wow what fun and great laughs we had, Ta-b lends herself well to having crew, especially such wonderful ones.
We spent the first couple of days together exploring Nelson's Dockyard and Falmouth Harbour. There is a lot of history, and some amazing boats here. Antigua is a lovely Country and very well off compared to some of its neighbors.
Then we picked up our repaired main sail (sadly it did not last as long as we had hoped, so we have had to splash out on a new one, which we are picking up in St. Martin in three weeks) and headed north to Barbuda about 40 miles away.
We listen to the weather on our Ham Radio every morning at 6.30am, and so knew we had to get to Barbuda before the swells from the hurricane force depression further north hit. We instead watched them from our safe anchorage, behind the reefs, on the south coast of Barbuda. The swells were amazing - huge, bringing in some spectacular waves onto the beach.
Barbuda is gorgeous and although linked with Antigua when the two islands became independent from England, it is totally different. About half the size of Antigua there are a mere 1,500 inhabitants, compared to Antigua's 80,000 and it is a low island with the highest point only 125 feet above the sea. The area is dotted with coral (and 200 shipwrecks), with endless pale pink beaches with hardly a soul on them. The largest is 11 miles. Ashore donkeys, horses, and goats roam wild and there is a large frigate bird rookery, which we visited.
We anchored in three different areas, snorkeled, walked the beaches, and generally kicked back which was our plan. There are four resorts, but only one was open and we were turned away by security when we tried to dock our dingy there. We found out later that Lady Diana had stayed there; apparently it was her second favorite (we never found out what her favorite was) place in the world. Just before she died she visited four times in one year - she found a real gem and so did we.
One day while we were there we visited the only town Codrington, had lunch at the one restaurant, and checked out the eastern coastline with its caves where the Caribs used to live - quite an experience and fun to share with our friends.
We popped into Jolly Harbour on our way back to provision, as it has an excellent supermarket by the Marina. It is still in its developing stages, with a large acreage of land in the middle of the harbour currently under construction. Elsewhere there are small inlets housing residential units, each with its on dock. You are not allowed to anchor in the harbour any more, and with only 11 mooring buoys it was either the Marina at $82 a night or anchoring outside (which we did). We plan to go back as it is the last place to check out before we make our way over to Nevis and a good place to stock up.
Our plans from here are to make our way to St. Martin via Nevis, St. Kitts, Statia and St. Barts. How long we will take depends on the weather, our mood and how much we like each place. We are on a go slow now as we have no agenda, could be interesting ....
Please add a comment if you view this blog, it is always good to hear from friends and family apart from email. Being away from you all is the hardest part of this adventure of ours.