We cleared into Antigua at Jolly Harbor, a harbor side community where many of the homes have docks rather than backyards so their boat is parked out back in the canal and everyone seems to have a canal view. We enjoyed going up the canals to look at the homes and boats perched on lifts.

We anchored in the Jolly Harbor channel for the first night, along with about 30 other boats. The next night we went around the corner to Hermitage Bay and anchored just off the beach under the view of the Hermitage hotel and the hillside cottages. Nice. We spent the evening listening to their live jazz band at the open air restaurant/ lounge. Unfortunately we couldn’t join them as it’s an all inclusive resort but did “utilize” their high speed Internet services. Why were all the boats anchored in the channel, this was awesome?

After getting our Internet fix we moved up the coast to Deep Bay. On entry to the bay there are some really impressive homes and you see the wreck of Andes from 1905, right in the middle of the bay. You can see the top of its mast sticking out of the water.

We kayaked to shore and climbed up the hill to Fort Barrington, a battery and observation post, which has views all around. It was nice sitting at the top looking out and catching the breeze. Its hot in the bays and when the wind drops at night you need to have all the hatches open to get as much air through the boat as possible.

To St John’s

The beach at Deep Bay was deserted so we decided we had to go back down and enjoy the nice white sand. There was no one around so we enjoyed having the beach to ourselves.  The beaches in Antigiua are all public so you can go to the high water mark even if there is a private resort on that beach or the island is private.    We kayaked out to snorkel the wreck in the middle of the bay. It had a lot of small fish and a couple of invading lion fish and was starting to grow coral on it. The wreck stands upright on the bottom of the Bay so pretty cool looking down on it. My focaccia bread needed to get in the oven so we returned so I could bake my first bread. We enjoyed it with our Canadian neighbors S/V Salty Ginger; Graham who had worked with Brett about 15 years ago in Seismic. What a small world.

Just past St John’s is Dickenson Bay a busy beach with many resorts and hotels and all kinds of water sports. So different to the other Bays we have been to on the West Coast.

As you do we went ashore to walk the beach and see the sights. Things were pretty quiet, as they had just gone into the low season. The view and drinks were good! We sat at one of the open air bars on the beach watching the sun set. The daytripper catamarans come right up to shore and pull out a laddar to let everyone off. Its amazing watching these boats pull right up onto the sand. 

The West Coast definetly had a lot of really nice anchorages in the various bays we passed and for the land lover lots of nice looking resorts. The colour of the water is very green but not real clear for snorkling and we didn’t seem to see alot of marine life.