Antigua

South of St Barth

In the afternoon of January 12th we left beautiful St Barth heading to Antigua. We prefer to sail overnight when we need to cover more than 70 miles in order to be sure we can reach our destination in day light. It was the case for this passage, with a good wind which turned in the right direction (60 degrees to the bow), allowing us to sail with an average speed of 6+ knots.

In the middle of the night Zoe slowed down abruptly to less than 2 knots in unchanged environmental conditions. The steering wheel became hard to turn.

We started making hypothesis of what the cause was. We first suspected the rudder to having become apart, but then we turned out thoughts to a much less dramatic possibility, that was having been trapped into a fishing net. We took a chance to turn on the engine and give full speed. Luckily the boat resumed it’s cruising speed, even if the wheel was still hard to handle. The next morning, when we anchored in the north of Antigua, we found out what happened. A small buoy was floating in the back of the boat along with some 20 meters of line, and another balloon was trapped in the rudder.

We felt terribly sorry for the unknown fisherman whose net we seriously damaged.

English Harbour

After a short nap to recover from the night passage, we continued toward English Harbour, that is the most fascinating port of Antigua, located in the south. It is a quite unique place as there are still several building from the 18th century that are testifying the noble past of the location, including the remainings of the old fort.

Carlisle Bay

The following day we went to Carlisle bay where we spent the night in front of a very exclusive resort.

The day after we did snorkeling in the Cade reef, where in very shallow water we could admire a great variety of sea life.

: Underwater in Cade Reef

: Underwater in Cade Reef

: Underwater in Cade Reef

Jolly Harbour

We moored one night in Jolly Harbour, where we met again Ian and Glenda, a British couple whom we had been sailing close to during the first part of the Atlantic passage. The next day we spent some time together in Deep Bay, before saying goodbye as we took opposite directions.

St John

We spent the night at the anchor in a small bay close to St John; we went to town by dinghy, and, for what we saw, the town was not particularly attractive, also because of the hordes of tourists offloaded by the giant cruise ships – a characteristic definitely not unique to St John, in fact quite common in many Caribbean islands.

We escaped and spent the next night in Dickinson bay, from where we headed to the north part.

Antigua is famous for its numerous white beaches, that are said to be 360, one for each day of the year.

Long Bay

We had the chance to admire beautiful white strips of sand in Long Island, in the north of Antigua. Walking ashore, we faced a beautiful villa characterised by an Italian style. Speaking to the service lady we found out that the villa was built by Mr Banfi, the Italian winemaker, who sold it to an American politician. The lady pointed out that the new owners come for two weeks in a year. What a waste!

Great Bird Bay

Our last stop in Antigua was Great Bird Island, a beautiful anchorage in the wilderness, were several spieces of birds make their nests.

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