Commodore
December 5, 2021

Snorkelling on the reef

We left Jolly harbour and continued our journey anti clockwise around the island. The wind has calmed down, the visibility is great and the colour of the water is dazzling.

Leaving sleek elegant Fatjax behind in Jolly Harbour

Rowan found this reef which is good for snorkelling, quite far out. There were a few big day boats out attached to mooring buoys. We kept our distance and anchored, but gave ourselves a huge fright by drifting way too close to the reef ! From 3.7ms under the boat we suddenly only had 20 cms. All was fine thank goodness but we didn’t have a good hold so we snuck in to where all the day boats had departed from, which was much better. As we were the only ones there, and it was quite choppy we took JeldiJeldi closer to the reef and tied her onto a buoy. It was a good snorkel with lots of fish and some nice big bits of coral, also managed to see a yellow and purple fish we have not seen for a while.

Anchored on the reef

We headed to the protection of Carlisle Bay for the night, sadly there was an enormous Gin Palace there but with only a couple of sailing boats it was still a magical spot. A very dramatic setting right up against some lovely unspoilt coastline with untouched bush. We have passed so many old ruined sugar mills this side of the island, we think the cane fields must have been taken over by the vigorous growth of the vegetation. These islands were famous for sugar and slaves.

Our wilderness anchorage full of turtles

We headed into the resort for sunset drinks and supper at their Asian restaurant for something a little different. A huge resort nicely landscaped with lots of palm trees, it seemed about a quarter full and mainly with Brits and kids. Obviously has a very good kids club judging by the amount of young kids about. Dinner reminded us of our old Mark Warner holidays with the amount of kids. One table had a child that completely lost the plot and was screaming the place down. The couple were trying to calm hime down rather than remove him from the restaurant. Our waitress was very disapproving – no child in Antigua would be allowed to misbehave and be that spoilt she said. Another table had a very loud quiz going on with their kids, some interesting geography and art questions, but some pretty outrageous inclusions…….’who is Justin Bieber’s wife?’ and ‘ how many contestants in Love Island?’! Impressively the young kids seemed to know all the answers, which was actually very entertaining.

Too close, but a good sunset reflected in my sunglasees

The contrast on the beach from the resort to the locals beach!

We enjoyed our meal and were gobsmacked to see the ostentatious light up of the Gin Palace near us. It was lovely having flat calm waters to return to PolePole on. Rowan couldn’t resist looking up the Gin Palace and has discovered it belongs to the grand daughter of the founder of Walmart and cost $300 million!