Category: Antigua

Its a Wrap

~ stull61 ~ 3 Comments

Now that we are reduced to watching sailing videos on Youtube, Delos pointed out that there are 50 people who called Delos home; and that got me thinking about how many people stayed on board La Mischief during her time on the high seas.

So I started to count them up….

  • 2013 (Sables D’Olonne to Marmaris, Turkey)

Countries/Islands Visited: France; Spain; Gibraltar; Balearic Islands, Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey

Total On Board: 16

  • 2014 (Marmaris to Leros)

Countries Visited: Greece, Turkey

Total On Board: 14 (New 11)

  • 2015 (Leros to Cyprus)

Countries Visited: Greece Turkey Cyprus (South and north)

Total Persons on Board : 11 (New 9)

  • 2016 (Cyprus to Barbados)

Countries/Islands Visited:Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Italy, Sardinia, Corsica, Balearics, Spanish Morocco, Gibraltar, Canaries, Cape Verdes, Atlantic Crossing, Barbados

Total People on Board: 16 (new 9)

  • 2017 Barbados to Florida

Countries/Islands Visited: Barbados, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua, Monserrat, Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, St Martin, St Barts, St Eustatius, St Martin, Saba, St Barts, Anguilla, BVIs, Bermuda, USA (Newport, RI to Maine to Florida)

Total People on Board: 16 (New 9)

  • 2018 (Florida to Colombia)

Countries/Islands Visited: USA, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Culebra, USVI, BVI, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, St Lucia, Bequia, Mustique, Mayreau, Tobago Keys, Union Island, Petit St Vincent, Carriacou, Grenada, Tobago, Guyana, Trinidad, Bonaire, Curracao, Aruba, Columbia.

Total People on Board : 13 (New 6)

  • 2019 (Colombia to Rio Dulce to Mexico)

Countries/Islands Visited: Colombia, San Blas Islands, Panama, Panama Canal, San Andres, Providencia, Guanaja, Roatan, Rio Dulce, Belize, Mexico

Total Persons On Board: 7 (New 2)

  • 2020 (Mexico to Florida)

Persons on Board : 3

Grand total 73

  • 34 Aussies
  • 22 US
  • 1 Slovenian
  • 3 Germans
  • 4 Canadians
  • 1 Polish
  • 1 Curacao
  • 1 Cypriot
  • 4 Poms
  • 1 Vietnamese
  • 1 Uruguayan
  • 1 kiwi

Sailing Past the Kingdom of Redonda

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We left Montserrat in light winds and tried very hard to sail but it was not to be so motor sailing it was. We were heading for Nevis but with an interim objective as well.

We were keen to pass close to Redonda, a small uninhabited island that is a mythical Kingdom, with quite a few “Kings” claiming to be the rightful heir to this piece of mythology dreamed up by an author called M.P. Shiel in a promotional leaflet for his books. Since the late 1800s the title has been “passed down”, to various literary figures and continues to the present day where it gets a bit murky with multiple claimants from Bob the Bald to Michael the Grey to a friend of Dee’s from California. The Caribbean’s own Hutt River Province.

For the record, Redonda is really a dependency of the country of Antigua and Barbuda but don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Birds and Beaches

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It took a lot of patience to wait out the high winds all week, waiting for that elusive weather window that would allow us to sail the 30nm over to Barbuda. We ended up taking off a day earlier than most of the rest of the mob, some of which were delayed by some Rugby team who have been doing well lately, probably because they are coached by an Australian.

The sail over was exhilarating, doing 8s and 9s with a single reef in a tricky 2m swell over 30m shallow water. Once we got close to the island, the water shallowed up and it was simply stunning – clear and beautiful. You could see the bottom in 8m of water. We dropped the sails and heading into shore on the recommended approach as per the charts and motored along the coast 100-200m out from shore. As we approached our anchorage at Low Bay, the water turned that cloudy milk colour that we had experienced on Antigua. The locals say it’s because of the ground swell. Disappointing. We SUP’ed into shore and checked out the resort that was closed and Codrington Lagoon that was across a narrow sand spit.

Next day we up’ed anchor and headed off in search of that wonderful clear beautiful water we’d seen on the way in. We found it 11nm around the bottom of the island at Cocoa Point, where we dropped anchor in 3m of stunning water.

We spend the rest of the day snorkelling and walking on the beach. The reef at the point looked interesting but wasn’t that great. The beach has being unofficially renamed Lady Di Beach because she evidently loved it there. As well as Cocoa Point resort, there’s also another one that’s currently closed called the K-Club that De Nero and Packer have purchased – but is currently the subject of a court case surrounding the extra 180 acres of land that got thrown into the deal.

As usual our social calendar was impromptu, depending on who turned up in the anchorage. As we were swimming back to the boat, we saw Venture Lady pull in. Gloria pulled in as well so 8 sailors meant sundowners one 5 o’clock on La Mischief, with a call to reconvene on Venture Lady for the subsequent 5 o’clock somewhere session.

Next day, we organised a tour to the Frigate Bird Sanctuary. We caught a taxi into Codrington and then hopped onto a small boat with Junior as our tour guide and zoomed across the lagoon to the mangroves where the frigate birds were mating and breeding. There were thousands of them hanging out of all the trees. We were able to get up quite close to the cute chicks and their parents who were gliding about on their 7 foot wingspans.

 

After two glorious days in Paradise it was time to up anchor and head back to Jolly Harbour to pick up Ramona and Barry and head off to Monserrat.

Lots and Lots and Lots and Lots of Wind

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Cricket over and done with, it was time to plan to see some of the rest of Antigua, even though it was blowing its t–s off. We toyed with the idea of using a small weather window to shoot up to Barbuda and sit out the bad weather up there; but we stuck our nose out into the swell and quickly decided this was not an option. Instead we kept inside the protective reef system to the north of Antigua and made our way around to Long Island.

Long Island was stunningly beautiful – a fact picked up by the up market resort that had taken over the whole island. Landing was forbidden by the resort ( As Chris Doyle says “Security is as tight as a cramped sphincter”) so we stayed on the boat and tried some snorkelling in Jumby Bay. Once again the water was cloudy and not great for snorkelling. It seemed that this was the case everywhere on the sheltered west coast of Antigua, where the fine shell grit was stirred up by the ground swell. Disappointing.

Next day we decided to up anchor and go around to Parham, which has seen better days. The holding was exceptional and the local fishermen sold us 3 huge crays for 80EC, but after that I’ve run out of anything else to say about the place. We had intentions of eating all three crays but they were so large that we were pretty full after the first and the other two were dispatched to the freezer for another day.

The pick of the places on the northern side appears to be Greater Bird Island so we motored out there and checked out the moorings, but just like the cat that got there just before us, we decided it was just to blowy and decided to head back. We checked out the anchorage in Davis Bay on the south coast of Long Island but decided to give it a miss and head back to Deep Bay on the West Coast.

Heading West, all we needed was a genoa and we were soon there. We anchored in 2m of milky water tucked into the bay. We contemplated snorkelling the wreck in the bay but it was just too blowy so we dinghied to the beach and climbed up to the fort instead. Nice views.

Friday Night at the beach bar in Jolly Harbour was beckoning so we only stayed a night in Deep Bay before heading back to anchor outside of Jolly Harbour in Mosquito Bay. Good news is there was no mosquitos in mosquito bay in this wind.

We gathered up Peter and Jenny, Peter from Stormbreaker, Andy, Alison, Fiona and Steve and headed to Castaways for a beach BBQ and a band.   Another great night with the B50 crew, plus some other yachties that we’d met along the way.

With the weather on the improve, it was time to set our sights northwards to Barbuda.

Dreadlock Holiday

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I don’t like cricket oh no
I love it – Dreadlock Holiday

We left English Harbour on a windy day and headed downwind towards Jolly Harbour, which was much closer to the cricket stadium. On the way we were passed by Lionheart, a “J” that was on its way to St Martin.

We got to Jolly Harbour and anchored outside near the boat channel. It was a longish dinghy ride into the marina passed all the houses on the various canals. We caught up with a few of the B50 fleet that were there along with Venture Lady who were also going to the cricket.

Its fair to say that some of us were looking forward to the cricket more than others. Dee for one was unimpressed how the shortened form of the game could still go a WHOLE day. Meanwhile the English contingent were pretty confident given the West Indies these days can’t seem to get a lot of their good players to play for them.

Me, I was just excited to get to see a cricket game in the Caribbean. And given I was going with some Pommie friends it was indeed necessary to barrack for the West Indies, my current home for the moment.

Anyway it turned out to be a fun day, despite my adopted team just failing to beat those dastardly Poms. Besides the cricket the highlights included the yummy well priced street food – Ribs, Pork and Chicken all delicious and meeting Ritchie Richardson and Sir Andy Roberts. Even got Sir Andy to smile.

A Very English Harbour

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We left Deshaies at first light on Sunday morning bound for English Harbour in Antigua. It took us 40 minutes to clear the wind shadow of Guadeloupe and start some real sailing. At 45 degrees to the wind we could just make the line we needed, whilst doing 5-6 knots. A squall came half way across and we had to put in a reef, but that didn’t slow us down any more.

We got to English Harbour just before 3pm and we were surprised by how small the three different choices of anchorages were. We’d gone to English Harbour in preference to Falmouth because the e-SailClear system only had English Harbour as an option. In reality we could have gone to Falmouth as it’s only a 10 minute walk around to the same Customs and Immigration office at Nelson’s Dockyard.

After checking out all three anchorages in English Harbour we settled on Galleon Beach, where we were just able to sneak in – as there were a lot of yachts in a small space; and to top it all off, the holding was not the greatest with a rubbly bottom. We ended up putting our secondary Fortress anchor out, shackled to our primary Rocna on 7m of its own chain to make sure we stayed put, especially since the wind was picking up during the week.

Shortly after getting our anchor set, Maisie dinghied over and we had a drink or two on the bow. Then they disappeared on a hot date at a local restaurant; and Dee and I headed for the hills. Shirley Heights on a Sunday evening is the place to be. There is a steel band to start with and then when the sun goes down there was another band with lots of dancing to be done. In between there was some great cheap barbecued food. It’s an Antiguan Institution on a Sunday Night and it turned out to be loads of fun. After we’d danced the night away, we caught a $10 taxi down the hill and ended up at The Cheeky Marlin, a beach bar run by Nick from Port Adelaide. Nick’s a great guy and it made a perfect end to a perfect night. Nick is supposed to shut the bar at sunset and he was still trying to do it at 10pm when we arrived. He thought he had finally managed to kick everyone out, but the rain came and we all raced in again for more drinks.

We spend the next day, exploring English Harbour and Falmouth, especially the chanderlies that were quite numerous. Both Falmouth and English Harbour are full of boats…from old classical boats and big new horrible looking motor yachts. The museum at the historic Nelson’s Dockyard was a highlight as was the bakery behind it. Yum!

Then it was off to Maisie for drinks with Martin and Rita, as well as Ken and Jenny from Lady Rebel, who had just arrived. After drinking a few too many red wines, we added the term “Maisied” to our vocabulary.

Where we were “Maisied”!!!

It made getting up early to pick up the hire car a bit more challenging than usual. Hiring a car in Antigua is a bit more expensive than you expect as you need a temporary local license that sets you back another $20. We managed to see most of Antigua driving around in a day. The beautiful beaches were the highlight – just a real pleasant island to drive around.

Antigua had a couple of really good walks. The first we did was up to Shirley Heights for the obligatory photo down to both harbours. From here we checked out the national park with a few other forts and an impressive interpretive centre, complete with a film presentation. From there, it was a short drop down to Galleon Beach, our original starting point.

The next day, we were on foot again across to the other side of the entrance to English Harbour where there is another fort, before trekking across the range to Pigeon Beach at the entrance to Falmouth Harbour. Then it was a short walk back into Falmouth.

Sitting on Maisie, we decided we needed to organise a bit of a mini B50 reunion at the Yacht Club. As well as the usual suspects from the previous drinking session, Thetis joined us from the Catamaran Marina across the bay in Falmouth and Peter, Jenny and Bill taxied down from Jolly Harbour to join in the festivities. A great night catching up with everyone.

Sitting on La Mischief one afternoon, we saw a commotion out in the entrance channel and out came the binoculars. We quickly worked out that it was a couple of competitors from the Talker Whisky Atlantic Challenges, a rowing race across the Atlantic.The idea of the Atlantic Challenge race came to Sir Chay Blyth whilst he was rowing the Atlantic  Ocean in 1966 with John Ridgeway. We met Chay sailing in Turkey in 2015. We took the dinghy out to see them and when we worked out they hadn’t had a beer in 3 months we rushed back to La Mischief to grab a couple for them.

Our last night in Galleon Beach was spent at the Cheeky Marlin eating burgers and watching Captain Ron on an upturned table on the beach with a white table cloth for a screen. The rain was a bit of a problem but a tarp over the projector did the trick. A great last night.

With the cricket fast approaching, it was time to head off to Jolly Harbour on the West Coast to get ourselves a bit closer taxi ride to Sir Viv Richards Stadium to hopefully see the West Indies beat England!