Left our sweet spot at Jumby Bay on Long Island (just off Antigua) and wove our way out through the reefs to make the crossing North to Barbuda. As we upped anchor, I thought to myself: ‘Today’s going to be one of those days’ - the ones where the wind is just right, the sun shines and you blissfully glide across the water without a care in the world. Well, it was nearly one of those days.... the wind was good, the sun did shine, but sadly it wasn’t quite as blissful as hoped for. Once away from the relative protection of the reefs, the high, side on swell rapidly became uncomfortable. I was OK with it, riding up and down on the deck as we were tossed around bucking bronco style. Chez didn’t fair quite so well.. that’s putting it very mildly. In the four years since we started sailing, this was the worst bout of seasickness she’s ever suffered. She was completely incapacitated, unable to even sit upright. With me acting as her somewhat inept nurse, she lay, life jacket on, wretchedly draped over the back of the transom in an awful state. She stayed there, pale, sweating and close to fainting, for the majority of the journey. I was going to mention to her that a sure fire cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree - but decided that just then probably wasn’t the best time for such unhelpful wisdom. Another thought just occurred to me as I write this: knowing that back in the day Admiral Lord Nelson had spent time in Antigua, and that he was reportedly also prone to seasickness. It’s quite possible that she could have actually been vomiting in the exact same places as he did!
The crossing took about four hours, happily she perked up a little in the last hour as the sea state calmed.
Barbuda is a low lying island, from a few miles out it’s just a thin green and white line - green from the vegetation and palms, and the white from the sandy shoreline. We dropped anchor close in on the long picture perfect beach.
The whole island was decimated by Hurricane Irma back in 2017. The back of the beach is now a hive of activity with carpenters putting the finishing touches to the next batch of resort accommodation to replace the old. To me it seems strange that the odds are very much against these buildings lasting very long either.. I suppose someone must be making enough money out of it all to make it viable. After a restful night we took the tender ashore, beached it, and continued the post Atlantic re-habilitation of our legs with a there and back stroll along the shore. It’s absolutely gorgeous. With the long sweeping beach pretty much to ourselves we headed towards signs of activity down one end. There’s some water sports toys in the water, see through kayaks, an inflatable assault course and a kite surfing school. These all appear to belong to the glamping resort whose rather lovely looking oversized tents are dotted along the back of the beach. In the foreground, every hundred yards or so there’s mildly officious signs advising ‘Private Property - Please, no public access beyond this point, Thank you’. All good: It’s a nice feature of Antigua and Barbuda that all beaches are freely publicly accessible up to the high water mark so our stroll continued on past the signs and back. This particular beach was reportedly frequented by Princess Diana when she visited. It has since been unimaginatively named ‘Princess Diana Beach’. Taking the tender to the less populated end of the beach we make a stop at a whitewashed shack bar which we’d read about on the internet: Shack-A- Kaï. The bar belongs to, and was built by, Enoch, a podgy ever smiling local in his 30s who offers to help us with pulling the tender up the beach as we arrive. I widen his grin by letting him know that he’s internet famous. He’s a chatty guy, who’s happy ramblings we listened to sitting in the shade enjoying a local Wadadli beer (Wadadli... which we now know to be the old name for Antigua). We pre-ordered the signature special of lobster on the BBQ for the following night, and headed back to the boat well pleased with our mornings work.
The next day, after an unsuccessful few hours fishing from the back of the boat, come evening I was glad to head back over to Shack-A-Kaï for the lobster. They were a lot bigger than expected, smothered in garlic butter and accompanied by our own supplied sides of mash and coleslaw (Enoch had previously advised: ‘I don’t do sides’). We enjoyed our meal watching the sun go down, and felt very appreciative of just how lucky we are to be able to spend evenings like this together in such lovely places. With smiling faces and full bellies, we thanked Enoch and headed back to the boat. Our recently arrived neighbour in the anchorage is worth a mention - it’s a grey navy military styled mega yacht called BOLD. We’ve met before: they’d been anchored near us in Corfu Town in July of last year. I suspect they could have got here considerably quicker, but as they didn’t - I’m taking that as our first long distance race win!
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