Farewell Antigua… Hello Sint Maarten

With a new exhaust hose installed we headed for English Harbour, just in time to meet up with s/v Anchorman before they left for Martinique. S/V Anchorman was another cruising boat that I had met on a Facebook group called, “Kids4Sail”. This group has a cross section of aspiring cruisers, boats currently cruising and past cruising families. New and aspiring cruisers generally use the group to ask advice of more experienced cruisers, generally questions specific to cruising with kids. Current cruisers seem use the group not only for advice but to find other cruisers and essentially meet up, so their kids can play. Earlier in November I crossed paths with s/v Anchorman on Facebook and indicated to them that we had just purchased a sailboat and my thirteen-year-old daughter was living aboard with her father in Jolly Harbour. Since they were making their way around Antigua when they got to Jolly Harbour they went looking for Tia. S/V Anchorman have on board a 9-year-old boy with two sisters one six and the other three years old. The meet up went well, they played at the beach and one day even invited Eryk and Tia aboard s/v Anchorman for a sail over to Deep Bay to snorkel the wreck of the Andes and then to checkout St-Johns. They all had a lot of fun, or so we were told, which made Hugh and Owen excited to meet them and particularly their son Ben. So, when we headed over to English Harbour to meet them, s/v Anchorman decided to delay their departure by a day for our families to meet and allow the kids to spend some time together. Once we dropped anchor in English Harbour the boys jumped in the water with Eryk and swam over to s/v Anchorman. Tia and I got out the paddle board and we all proceeded to the nearby beach. As we were getting to know one another we were joined by another family. This new family was s/v Enigma and they were a family of four, with a 9 year-old boy and a 6 year-old girl. The kids played as the adults got to know one another, discussed our backgrounds (s/v Anchorman were from England and s/v Enigma from France),discussed our cruising experiences and our plans. The next day s/v Anchorman moved on to Guadeloupe, we were sad to see our new friends go, but also happy to have made new friends with s/v Enigma. To top it off two other cruising boats, friends of s/v Enigma, came in that day in English Harbour, with yet more kids.

English Harbour was a beautiful spot, it was essentially an old fort, Fort Berkeley, that had been transformed into a tourist spot. There was a cute little bakery that made delicious pastries and a few shops. The weekend we spent in English Harbour happened to be the same weekend they were having a super yacht charter show, which meant there were about a dozen extravagant yachts lining the dock. We would pull up in our little dingy and climb out to be faced with a monstrous yacht, whose dingy alone was something to ogle. The kids would peer into the garages filled with toys, such as jet skis and mutter words in awe. The contrast of old and new was what caught my eye, these modern yachts contrasted by the history of a beautiful old fort. From there we would walk around the fort, which seemed to capture the attention of the kids and they each started asking their own sets of questions. Hugh was most interested in the Manchineel trees. He had heard about these trees at one point and wasn’t certain how to recognize them. Being unfamiliar with them ourselves, Eryk decided to let him research it and inform the family on what he found. Owen was most interested in the British Royal Artillery cannons, wondering how to operate them, so that became his assignment.Tia we assigned the history of Fort Berkeley itself.

Sunday’s in English Harbour there is a BBQ on top of Shirley’s Heights, with a steel drum band. This is an event not to be missed when in Antigua. So, we decided to attend with all the new friends we had recently made, the four boats brought our group to fifteen all together. We climbed the hill, which was quicker than expected, then looked down at the bay where our sailboats sat on anchor below. The BBQ was delicious and the atmosphere lively with the sound of steel drums playing songs we could recognize including some Christmas classics.We watched as the sun dip down to the horizon and then returned to our boat before darkness fell.

Unfortunately, we cut our time in English Harbour short after that night. Even with all the beauty that English Harbour brought, the actual anchorage situation was a bit of a nightmare, pun intended. For starters the hold on the ground was tenuous at best as the sand was not very deep. Then there were the swirling winds caused by the nearby hills, making boats anchored next to each other to move in different directions (this is atypical as usually everyone swings in synch).When you mix that with the popularity of the spot and the numbers of boats wedged into the anchorage it makes for sleepless nights as even more experienced sailors get unnerved by how close the boats come together. That night myself and the skipper of s/v Huapaé spent the night in the cockpit of our boats waiting with a fender in case the two decided to bump in the night. They did come within feet of one another a couple of times but never touched. We resorted to deploying our fenders, and one of the other boats tied themselves underwater to a 200-year-old British Navy chain from Lord Nelson’s time. But eventually we had enough and decided to head back to Jolly Harbour where we could drop anchor with lots of hold and room and be sure to get a good night sleep.

The anchorage wasn’t the only reason we decided to go back to Jolly Harbour that day though. It seemed that Roxy had a nasal infection and I wanted to bring her to see a vet in St John’s, which would be much closer to get to from Jolly Harbour. The next day we sailed over to St-John’s and anchored in the harbor. St-John’s was an interesting place, full of crowds of people,and cars everywhere. As we were looking for a spot to anchor we passed by no less than four cruise ships at the dock and we suddenly felt rather dwarfed in size as we passed by the hull of one of these gargantuan boats. Once anchored Tia dropped Roxy and I off the dingy dock by paddle board and we headed over to the vet by foot. It took about fifteen minutes of weaving our way through crowds of people and crossing roads careful not to be run over. The reactions to Roxy walking through town were interesting and quite polar. People either loved or feared her and they were not afraid to show it. Roxy’s breed cousins seem to be popular in law enforcement and security in Antigua, which we assume is one of the reasons she was causing so many reactions. Once at the vet she informed me that Roxy had an upper respiratory infection, our assumption was it was from the plane. The vet prescribed us some antibiotics and we were off again to make our way back through the crowds. Back at boat we raised anchor and headed for the peace and quiet of a nearby anchorage of Deep Bay before nightfall.

The next couple of days we went snorkeling the wreck of the Andes and then back to Jolly Harbour where we found our friends from English Harbour. We were all wrapping our time up in Antigua as they were planning to head to St-Kitts and Nevis and we wanted to head to Sint Maarten to buy parts and work on the boat. As we headed to the beach for one last play date before we parted ways, we found a crowd of four other “kid boats” which had just arrived in Antigua from the BVIs. As it turned out, I had been talking to a few of the mother’s on “Kids4Sail”, I knew they were planning to arrive in Antigua before Christmas, but did not know the date or where, so it was fortunate that we crossed paths that day. Again, we all exchanged stories, each one of them with a different “plan” or no plan at all. We hope to cross paths with some of them again, maybe by summer in Grenada.

The next morning at 0330 Eryk and I raised anchor as the kids slept in their bunks and we headed out in the darkness on our twelve-hour sail to Sint Maarten. We enjoyed our time in Antigua, all the friendly locals,the beautiful beaches, and will perhaps return before our trip is over.

The sail to Sint Maarten was our longest and most challenging yet. The wind was strong and the wave swells were the largest we had ever sailed in. However, we are happy to report that s/v SeaSparrow sails fast and well, so we made great progress without any major issues, that was until we dropped anchor in Sint Maarten and the propeller on one of our engines fell off…but more on that later.