Arrived in Antigua

I finished my shift towards the end of Guadalupe, and I was very pleased as the wind picked up and Rowan could deal with it while I tried to sleep. I’m definitely getting a bit more confident. Sailing passed Guadalupe the boat traffic increased dramatically after not seeing a single boat during the day. I found on my radar a boat coming straight for us, I didn’t want to pass on the right as that was heading for land and a tanker had just passed on my left. So I went slightly left, which was quite exciting being sandwiched between two boats in the pitch dark, it kept me on my toes! The thing is the radar makes everything closer than it is.

We finally got into English harbour in Antigua at 8:30am, we had to anchor out at Shirley’s Heights which was pretty crowded and took a couple of goes to anchor, so that we weren’t too close to any other boat. Finally we got the harbour master on the vhf who told us that we had to wait on board until he and the medical officer arrived on board. We baked in the midday heat, and listened to a few irate calls to the harbour master, one boat had been waiting since yesterday. It gave us a chance to put our quarantine flag up, Rowan accidentally let go the little rope and the flag shot up to the top and got stuck. The only solution was for me to be winched up the mast as I would never be able to crank Rowan up. So pleased there was not a breath of air, the water was as flat as a pancake as I was hoisted up and got the rope down.

Looking across to the old fort guarding the entrance

Finally at 3:30pm we were told to head to the dock and the medical officer met us there. He took our temperature, checked our PCR (Covid test result) gave us forms to fill in and sent us onto Immigration, who announced they were closing at 4pm. There was a little hissy fit from all of us particularly the two French couples who had been waiting since yesterday. Thankfully the officers stayed on and with loads more form filling we were finally free to enter Antigua.

The other boat checking in with us was an English guy with his crew who had just crossed the Atlantic, this was their first step on land in 20 days. He has a sailing business/charter in Croatia, he had Croatian and English crew. The English crewman had a panic attack after leaving the Canaries, his arms paralysed into claws and he was in agony so he had to be airlifted by helicopter off the boat in rough seas. Sounded very hairy. The hospital found nothing wrong, he got better and completed the sail no problem. They are all so young and when we mentioned that we learnt to sail in Croatia in 2003, they laughed because they were all still at school then! He and his girlfriend are going to run charters here.

We had a little wander around English harbour, which is over three hundred years old, and has a lot of old buildings which they have renovated and are in use. Signs say it is a Unesco Heritage site which is amazing. There is certainly a lot more money here, huge big expensive boats, a lot of very elegant old sailing boats and then the inevitable Gin Palaces, mainly British too. We stopped at a harbour bar for a drink and considered eating out, but I was way too tired. We were very happy to get back to Pole Pole, have a snack and watch another gorgeous sunset.