Tag Archives: Antigua

Decision Fatigue – Jolly Harbour, Antigua, February 23, 2024

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Decision Fatigue – Jolly Harbour, Antigua, February 23, 2024

We have been moving pretty quickly lately and you may be wondering why we are suddenly heading south again after all the talk of going to Brunswick, Georgia for the off season.  Since our guest left, we have been spending a lot of time discussing our off season plan and what we are going to do for that 6 month period.  After kicking around ideas we think we have made one of the necessary choices.  We considered:

#1 – spending a month in each place we wanted to visit including Georgia, Ohio, and a couple of other states

#2 – Getting an apartment again in Ohio

#3 – Spending the off season in Georgia at a marina on the boat

#4 – Turning around, hauling out again on Grenada, and buying an RV to travel in for the next few years.

You can guess where we ended up since we have turned around.  It turns out that when we consider insurance, haul out prices, storage prices for the boat, flights, and the time we have left, Grenada won out.  It was cheaper there, we had flights with points, buying an RV was cheaper than rent, we could still travel (which we both wanted to do), we could easily see family more often, we only have 2 more months of sailing season, and lastly it was a La Nina year.  This means hurricane season was supposed to be terrible and we didn’t want to chance leaving the boat in the water.  We were only one-third of the way to Brunswick and realistically needed more time to choose the right weather to make it back to the states.

Whew!  It was a lot of analyzing but we now officially have a plan and after taking the last available window to go east back to Antigua (for at least the next month), we are in a place to pull this off and set ourselves up to have some fun in the process.  Neither of us loved the southern islands but we have decided to give them another try.  We didn’t dislike everywhere but would be a bit more choosey about where we decided to stay and frankly slow down a bit in those better places.

We left St. John where the winds had clocked around to the south and it was so bad neither of us got any sleep but got up and left for Antigua anyway.  It was the only day the weather would let us leave and we couldn’t miss it.  Our weather service (Chris Parker) assured us there would not be another chance for potentially another month or more and there was no time to waste. 

So, we start again in Jolly Harbor, where the best Mexican food is the southern Caribbean is!  Not a bad place to be.  After a few days of rest recovering from our last overnight sail this season we filled up on our required Mexican and made the small hop down to Guadeloupe and then Iles Des Saintes.  We were very lucky on our sail down we saw a baby whale and he was about 5 feet from the boat!  He was incredible!

So close

Our first stop was Deshaies, Guadeloupe where they have the most beautiful botanical garden.  It was home to the flamingos!  We felt very lucky and have gotten to see some amazing things this week!

Color contrast is amazing
Beautiful experience
Does not look real
Pink bananas?
Amazing

The Lone Seahorse – St. Croix, USVI, February 16, 2024

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The Lone Seahorse – St. Croix, USVI, February 16, 2024

This was our first time to St. Croix Island.  We missed this heading to Grenada due to not having a weather window to come over.  St. Croix is not a very protected island and is known for it’s terrible swell, so we were thrilled to get a chance to come over directly from Puerto Rico!  You see, there are seahorses here and I have only ever seen one at the zoo.  We jumped on the opportunity and took the salty 6-hour sail to drop anchor near Frederiksted Pier.  I had a good feeling since on our sail over we saw dolphins!  It was the first time this whole season and there were about 20 fishing and jumping out of the water right next to us.  Perhaps Buddy and Biscuit had not forgotten about me after all 😊.   I was too excited to take any photos.

Of course, we had something break which is typical and Ron took the necessary time to trouble shoot the starter on one of the engines and he took apart the switch in hopes this would fix it.  Luckily, we had a spare on board, and he was able to replace it.

This is a cruise ship stop and I was thrilled to learn they have very good vegetarian taco’s here!  It must be the luck of the dolphins, so we had to see seahorses right?  Well, we ended up snorkeling the pier 4 separate times and we saw only one.  Seriously?  The first time we swam to the pier by simply jumping off the boat, however we both got stung so much by the jellyfish that even after showering with vinegar we had to wait a while for all the feeling to come back.  We did get smarter about it as we went and took the dinghy the next 3 times. 

You see seahorses are masters of camouflage amongst some of the most beautiful soft coral either of us had ever seen.  Not only that but they only like very calm water and are about the size of a Q-Tip.  This makes them terribly difficult to see so we only saw the one on our first dive.  However we did see a lot of other cool sea life including octopus, rays, turtles, and even the first spotted eagle rays we have seen this year.  This was right up there with Blue Tang Reef except the coral and sea life was very different and certainly more colorful. 

Find the seahorse.
Amazing colors
Beautiful soft coral
Pet barracuda

Frederiksted itself is a sleepy little town and unless there is a cruise ship in town you would think no one lived there since very little was open.  We stuck around on cruises ship day just to see what the town was like when it was open, and I will say it livened up quite a bit.  Suddenly, the beaches were packed, there were trinket stands open all along the shore way to buy souvenirs, and all the shops and restaurants were open. 

However, we only needed to see that once and as always, weather forced us to take the trip back over to St. John USVI the next morning.  Remember I said St. Croix has no protection?  Well, the winds were picking up and the anchorage had gotten quite full of swell.  It was only another day sail until we got to a very nice, protected anchorage just in time for happy hour!  It would be an early night since we planned a nice challenging hike the next morning.

We took the chance to head out early the next morning before it got too hot to do the Petroglyph Trail.  This was a 3.5 mile out and back trail (7 miles total) which was rated as “difficult” in the all-trails app.  It didn’t turn out to be half as hard as many of the other trails we had done and well worth seeing the spring fed waterfall and petroglyphs at the end!

Love to know the story
Steam powered sugar mill
Boiling station to reduce sugar cane.
Amazing structures everywhere

We were both exhausted after the hike when Ron did a double check of the weather and it appeared we would have an opportunity to leave the next morning for St. Marten, no wait, it was directly to Antigua.  It’s nice to literally go where the wind blows.  There was one issue…Antigua required an exit certificate which we did not have and were not in the right place to get.  This will require us to go over to Cruz Bay to customs via the dinghy which was 5 miles of open water.  This is a VERY long dinghy ride, but we could not take over Mariposa or we would lose our mooring ball and we were lucky to snag in the first place. 

This was not one of the stupidest things Ron and I have ever done (that would be in Barbuda) but it was close.  At least we realized it before Customs closed and we ended up with all the necessary paperwork.  I guess we are heading to Antigua in the morning for our 24-hour sail.

Perfect ending

Land of the Mega Yachts – Barbuda Island, Antigua, January 5, 2024

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Land of the Mega Yachts – Barbuda Island, Antigua, January 5, 2024

We have a great time in the states and the reset was definitely needed.  We were happy to be back and spent the first couple of days back watching fireworks and doing more work on the boat while we were still in Jolly Harbor Marina.  We were able to get our friend Disco back to help with out wind sensor and he went up the mast again.  Now we had our depth replaced, wind sensor fixed, and reprovisioned a nice hunk of Red Stripe to last us another little while.  It was time to move on again. 

Since we were in no hurry to head north and had a nice spell of very, very unusually calm weather, we decided to head over to Barbuda.  It was roughly 30 miles directly east and due to this fact, very few people ever see this island.  It will be a first time for us.  I understand now why it is so desirable.  It was stunningly beautiful!  The beaches were miles long, the water was blue and clear, and it was to closest we have had to the beauty of the Bahamas since the Exumas.

Think it got harder

We spent a couple of days snorkeling which was nice but not the best.  We couldn’t help but notice how many mega yachts there are here.  Somewhere in the range of 5 at all times.  I have to assume it is mostly based on the proximity to St. Barts (the richest island in the Caribbean).  But hey, we have never had any issues hanging out with the rich before and it was very safe.

The other side of the tracks
Same view but much cheaper from Mariposa

After a nice lazy couple of days, we had made a new plan to check out hear and head to St. Barts.  This required us to head to shore and visit the customs office which was located in Codrington (the only settlement on the island).  We moved north about an hour and started to take the dinghy in. 

Now Ron and I have done some stupid things on our sails but this one tops the charts.  We knew how hard hit Barbuda was from Hurricane Irma in 2017 and that there had been a cut created in the lagoon where we could get the dingy to shore and dock.  What we didn’t know is there are breaking waves across this little break and how treacherous it was to cross here to get into this lagoon which was only 3 feet deep and the largest bird sanctuary in the world.   We chickened out the first time and this was only after $200EC literally blew out of Ron’s pocket.  Well great hope customs doesn’t charge us to get out!  When we saw another boat go and give it a try, we hoped in our dinghy to try and follow them.  They ended us chickening out but we decided to give it a go and made it!  Sure hope we can make it back out!

Marching to our death. No closer photos we were to scared to not hold on.

We walked around Codrington a little but honestly, there wasn’t must there and it was obvious what a total loss had happened in 2017.  We successfully found the customs office and checked out.  Now it was time to try and get back through the cut…uh oh.

Cute little house
This church survived Irma.
The poverty on the islands all look the same.

The good news the trip home was uneventful and not nearly as bad as our ride to get into the dock. We were right on schedule to leave in the morning for St. Bart’s. We had a 3:00am departure and due to the unusually calm weather we had, were avoided all the shallow coral of Barbuda and were able to have a very nice downwind sail which were not used to having after beating into the wind all of last year to get to Grenada. It was going so well that we had changed our plans pretty early in the sail to keep going all the way to St. Martin. We strolled in just before sunset and just before it started to rain, picked up our mooring in Marigot Bay. It seems as if we were back in civilization here and we were a bit excited with all the good restaurants. The weather is going to keep us here for about the next week so we will settle in and enjoy!

They Are Back! – Jolly Harbour, Antigua, April 25, 2023

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They Are Back! – Jolly Harbour, Antigua, April 25, 2023

Since we had odd winds out of the west, we decided to take our opportunity to see Antigua and took the day to sail over.  It was awesome because as we were approaching the island a whole pod of dolphins came to see us.  Buddy & Biscuit are back!

Buddy and family.

We picked up a mooring ball in the harbor but boy was there a lot of seaweed!

Wow!

Jolly Harbor is a lovely little seaside community but outside of a good grocery store it was mostly private houses.  We walked around a bit but there wasn’t much to do here.  Since it was the first day here we dinghied to snorkel “the five sisters” which is a little group of island and some surprisingly good reefs.  Sadly, the coral was about 50% dead but I am not sure if this means it is recovering from the two major hurricane hits (Maria & Irma) a few years ago or if it is dying due to rising ocean temperatures.  It was nice to get back in the water since it has been too rough to snorkel at all in St. Martin (although we tried) and we had been moving ever since.

The next day we tried to rent a car, but the guy couldn’t have cared less and since he had such a bad attitude towards us that we decided not to give him our business and as it turned out, he was the only game in town.  So we walked the town but there is surprising little to do here and the vibe of the island was rather unwelcoming.  It is the first island where we have felt that way.  The good news is there is a fantastic Mexican restaurant.  Gotta love that!

Best tacos we have had!