Sailing to English Harbour Antigua

Jolly Harbour slipping away into the distance behind us

We made an early start from Jolly Harbour on Monday 2 December, getting the anchor up at around 0645.  The wind was quite light to begin with and we had a pleasant close reach out across the shallows and along the west coast of Antigua.  At the southwest tip we hardened up, further than might have been expected as the wind bent around the headland following the coast, so the wind was more easterly than southeasterly along the south coast.

Falmouth and English Harbours ahead

Looking into Falmouth Harbour where large yachts had
started gathering for the Antigua Superyacht Show

It also increased quite significantly and BV romped along happily.  It was all going beautifully but there was a very large, very black cloud ahead and slightly to port, bearing down on us, with the view underneath blocked by lots of very heavy rain.  Discretion being the better part of valour, we tacked in towards the coast and continued to sail in bright sunshine whilst the squall passed us by and messed up someone else’s day.

Approaching the narrow entrance to English Harbour

Half way between the entrances to Falmouth and English Harbours we lost the wind under the high ground and resorted to engine power a little earlier than we had intended.  But it gave us time to get things prepared for anchoring in English Harbour, a longer job than normal as we planned to anchor close off the beach in the very south of the harbour, with the main anchor out to our north and our kedge anchor out towards the beach.  We’ve done this before and it works well, keeping BV well clear of the main anchoring pool off Galleon Beach, where the swirling current and variably down-drafting breezes keep the yachts spinning around randomly.  And we were pleased to have the plan as the anchorage was busy and our friends, Doug and Mary Mann in Zipporah (whom we had last seen in Annapolis) were in ‘our’ spot in the main anchorage, close to the entrance channel.

BV nicely settled anchored fore-aft

We made a bit more of a job of anchoring fore-aft than we had intended, partly because we wanted to get the kedge anchor into good sand close in towards the beach and for that we needed to launch the dinghy.  Perhaps it would have been better to have started with a line ashore to a tree and then convert to the kedge anchor afterwards.  Or maybe not.  Most other yachts that anchored/moored fore-aft off the beach us during the time that we were there used a line ashore to a tree rather than a kedge anchor.  We just didn’t want to put lines ashore across a beach that we knew people walk along.  Anyway, after a bit of back and forth faff we got ourselves sorted out and BV nicely settled for the duration.

The view of Galleon Beach to starboard of BV

Charlotte Reef out to port

‘The duration’ turned out to be quite a lot longer than we had originally envisaged; in the in the end we spent 11 days in English Harbour and had a thoroughly enjoyable time.  Indeed we were very tempted just to stay put and celebrate Christmas there as we had the previous year but if we’d done that we’d probably have ended up staying all season!

Top: Looking south along the anchorage in English Harbour and up towards Shirley Heights.  Bottom: Once we’d anchored fore-aft others copied so we started to get neighbours

English Harbour, Antigua