Jolly Harbour Antigua

Antigua’s west coast ahead of us

Great sailing – straight out of
a tourist brochure!

We made a reasonably prompt start out of Barbuda on Friday 21 December.  Firstly, we wanted to leave with the sun behind us so that we could see all the shoal patches and coral heads, though it also needed to be high enough to light up the water so we couldn’t depart too early.  Secondly, we wanted to arrive at Jolly Harbour, about 35nm away, early enough to be able to do a supermarket run that afternoon.  On the OCC Net on the SSB radio at 0730 that morning we had arranged with Alastair and Ester Hill (Cranstackie) that we would meet them and some of the other OCC crews at anchor off Jolly Harbour for dinner that evening, so that provided us with our timeline to achieve.

North end of Antigua

We had a cracking sail south from Barbuda, with a good 15kts of wind on, or a bit forward of the beam.

Passing St John’s

BV made a good speed and with bright blue skies, turquoise seas and the lovely colours of Antigua as we got closer, it really was tourist brochure sailing at its best.

The final few miles from St John’s to Jolly Harbour are very shallow (mostly about 5-6m deep) and the water here is very turquoise.  Perfect for pictures to upset your Facebook friends!

Approaching Jolly Harbour

We made good time and by early afternoon had worked our way in through the outer approaches and dropped anchor close outside the harbour entrance.

Working our way into the anchorage outside Jolly Harbour

We made a quick trip ashore to visit the excellent Epicurean supermarket and stock up on things that we could not buy (eg Marmite!), or could not buy as economically, at the small Covent Garden supermarket in English Harbour.  On our way through the marina and its environs we noted how much more active the whole place seemed compared to our visit in March.  Then, there was still a lot of destruction left over from the hurricane the previous year.  Now, all the businesses are open and the marina is nearly full of yachts.  The anchorage outside is also a lot busier too.

Cranstackie and Ruby Tuesdayat anchor

We returned to BV and managed to put all the food away in time for our scheduled meet.  As we pottered across to see Alastair and Ester we realised that the yacht between us and them was Ruby Tuesday with Elsie and Lionel on board.  We had last seen them in Beaufort NC from where they had set off for Antigua via Bermuda.  We stopped off to see them and to invite them along to the OCC gathering but they already had plans for the evening.  It was a shame but we had a quick catch up with them before joining Alastair and Ester and the crews of Coho (Louise and Gordon), Kinetic (Andy and Lisa), Exbury (Alfred and Julie) and Passport (Anne and Ernie, only just arrived from Bermuda – good stamina!) at Castaway’s restaurant for an excellent dinner and lots of great conversation.

Early morning over Jolly Harbour anchorage

We could easily have stayed longer but we had plans to be back in English Harbour for the run-up to Christmas so the following morning we made a relatively prompt start, did a quick circuit of the anchorage to say goodbye to people and headed off.  We know that in time we will catch up with some, or all of them again, and between now and then we’ll keep in loose touch with the OCC SSB Net.

Jolly Harbour, Antigua