Green Island Antigua

The English Harbour fuel dock

Slightly bleary after a night with the RN Tot Club, the 0810 repositioning to the fuel dock on Saturday 31 March was something of a rude awakening, particularly as the fuel dock staff was working to ‘island time’. When we arrived off the fuel dock there were already 2 yachts alongside waiting for fuel, we became number 3 in line. By the time the pumps opened for business (at 0845 vs the advertised 0800) there was at least one other yacht circling too. But we eventually fuelled up and headed off around the east of Antigua to Nonsuch Bay and Green Island.

South side of Green Island (top) and the western tip of Green Island with the West Bay anchorage (bottom)

We had a nice beat along the coast towards Green Island, where we planned to anchor just to the north of the island, in the shelter of the barrier reef which protects Nonsuch Bay. The waters all around Green Island are shoal and between the island and the mainland shore there are twisting channels between coral reef outcrops. The light conditions were good for spotting the deepest [Ed: and shallowest!] water but even so we felt is prudent to lower/roll away all the sails before committing ourselves to the channel, this being our first approach. Happily, reality and the charts agreed and we saw no less than 5m of water all the way around to the anchorage and, for much of the time, far more than that.

Northwest tip of Green Island with a catamaran anchored in the shelter of the barrier reef

West Bay, which looked lovely and has a beautiful sand beach, was filled with yachts but Nicky particularly wanted to anchor off the northwest tip of Green Island, in the shelter of the reef.

Now, over which bit of beautiful turquoise sea should we anchor?

There were several moorings available but we prefer to anchor if possible (we know the state of our ground tackle, a mooring may be secure but, then again, it may not). Choosing exactly where to anchor, well that was the difficult bit. The very turquoise water under the catamarans in the picture above looks inviting but is just a bit too shallow for comfort for us.

Tiploufat anchor

Once settled at anchor we had a good look at our surroundings. We’re a little ashamed to say it but we didn’t recognise the French catamaran, Tiplouf(pictured above), that was anchored reasonably close to us. Didier and Benedicte recognised BV though and came over to say hello. We had met on Grande Salvagem, way back (or so it seems) in early October 2017 when we had been anchored off the island and had been on the same tour around the nature reserve. Whilst we had known that they had been planning to cross the Atlantic, somehow we hadn’t expected to see them again. How wrong we were! Now we have seen in the Caribbean all the yachts that were at anchor off Grande Salvagem, or which popped in and then left again, whilst we were there.

Dressed overall to celebrate the 100^thanniversary of the formation of the RAF

Sunday 1 April was Easter Sunday. More to the point it was the 100^thanniversary of the formation of the world’s first independent air force, the Royal Air Force. We couldn’t let such an auspicious occasion go unmarked, so we dressed BV overall and even broke out a brand new ensign (bright, bright red not faded to a dull pink) to celebrate. Mind you, most of the yachts in the anchorage probably just thought that we were very committed Christians! And to do things properly, sundowners just had to be G&T with a background accompaniment of the Central Band of the RAF playing the RAF Marchpast and other rousing tunes.

So, we had a lovely couple of days anchored off Green Island. Charlotte did a lot of sunbathing; we all snorkelled over the reef, but that was rather disappointing with lots of dead coral and very few fish; and we dived on and cleaned BV’s hull using the compressor and diving regulators. This was Charlotte’s first try at diving and she thought it great fun and, better still, did a great job of scrubbing the port side of the hull too!

But most of all, we just enjoyed the view.

Green Island, Antigua