Back to English Harbour for Christmas

Jolly Harbour in the rear-view mirror

We made a reasonably early start from Jolly Harbour on Saturday 22 December as we wanted to get back to English Harbour to refuel before the fuel dock closed for the day.  Once we were clear of the high ground we had a good breeze from the east and, with a reef in the main and full genoa and staysail, we had a brisk close reach to the southwest point of Antigua followed by a good beat along the south coast.

Entrance to English Harbour with Charlotte Reef between us and the yachts at anchor in Freeman Bay

We made decent time and reached the entrance at 1235 and were alongside the fuel dock at 1300.

The cliffs between Charlotte Point (with trees) and Harman Point (just out of the picture)

Charlotte Reef with yachts at anchor in Freeman Bay and Galleon Beach behind

What we hadn’t realised was that the fuel dock shuts at 1300 on Saturday, but since there was a superyacht alongside still refuelling, the fuel berth attendant took pity on us and let us refuel too.  We took 124litres (in US gallons).  The superyacht (a sailing vessel) took over 10 times that amount.

The anchorage was crowded so we joined a few other yachts in anchoring fore-aft at the southern end of Freeman Bay

We had noted how busy the anchorage was as we motored past up to the fuel dock.  Disappointingly, when we returned it hadn’t become any less empty. The holding at the northern end is variable – the bottom is quite rocky – and at the southern end the wind is fluky and comes from all directions so boats at anchor there spin in circles and not infrequently collide or get uncomfortably close.  However, there were a few yachts anchored fore-aft right at the southern end, all of which had been there when we were last in the harbour a week ago.  We thought that they had the rights of it and so set ourselves up to join them.  It was a little tricky as there was a catamaran free anchored a bit east of where we wanted to be but we eventually juggled making BV go backwards in a straight line with dropping the main anchor on our nominated patch of sand and picking up the line on our previously positioned kedge. It’s been a while since we moored ‘Turkish style’ (with a line ashore) but the technique came back [Ed: sort of!]. Once we were more or less settled, Nicky hopped back into the water and sought out the anchors of yachts we thought might be concerned by our presence.  I used our golfing laser range-finder to measure the distance to her so that we could decide if there really was likely to be a problem.  The owner of the catamaran was concerned by our location, though we were just far enough away from him.  However, he was more concerned when Nicky pointed out to him that his anchor wasn’t dug in at all and was just lying on the seabed. When his crew returned he joined us and the rest of the fore-aft brigade, which made things very easy for us. And, in fact, we found being anchored fore-aft at that end of the bay so relaxing (no concerns about other yachts anchoring too close) that we will definitely do it again when we return to Antigua.

English Harbour, Antigua