St Barthelemy to Antigua (Overnight)

We’d decided not to heed advice to go with the wind, which would have had us stopping at the “Islands that Brush the Clouds” – how romantic a name is that? – Saba, St Kitts & Nevis, in favour of the historic harbours of Antigua, 60 nautical miles away to the South East. Setting sail around 5.30pm, we settled into an early watch routine, hoping to be in Antigua sometime mid morning, however it was almost 24 hours later that we finally dropped the hook in Freemans Bay, English Harbour.

English Harbour – Antigua

Early next morning headed over to Nelson’s Historic Dockyard to check in and do a bit of exploring. We also had a little provisioning to do; bottled water, gin, tonic, rum, coke, wine and Camembert…. the staples.

The Customs & Immigration staff were some of the friendliest I’ve come across and the dockyard itself is very picturesque and, well….historic! A visit to the museum started to give us a feel for the times of huge wooden ships made from thousands of oak trees, sailing into uncharted harbours such as this one, where they could ‘careen’ their boats (using ropes and capstans to pull the ship over on its side) to repair the underside.

But the whole place was very quiet and we began to realise exactly what “out of season” means in the Caribbean. English Harbour and next door’s Falmouth Harbour were pretty much deserted; there was one big sailing superyacht in English Harbour, but the rest of the berths were empty and wandering along the road in search of provisions, we found many eateries & bars were boarded up or empty.

Although in many ways it was nice not to be surrounded by tourists, I don’t feel we got the true measure of Antigua on this visit and it would be nice to come back in Regatta Week when the place has some life to it.