The Frigatebird Colony on Barbuda

Tracking down George Jeffery, the tour guide recommended by our guidebook and some friends of ours had proven quite difficult the previous day.  His mobile telephone was not working and the other number we had for him put us through to a lady in Antigua.  She had said that she would contact George via her nephew (in Barbuda) and that we would get a reply via a different WhatsApp number.  All very convoluted!  With no messages received during our walk, we had asked Claire at the Art Café and she had directed us to his house – he wasn’t in.  In the end we had asked around at the harbour and had been directed to him, waiting for someone outside one of the grocery stores. We’d arranged that he would collect us from BV at 1000 on Wednesday 19 December; he arrived a little early because (quote) “I look at the sun for the time.  I have no timepiece.”  Nicky was tickled by the use of the word timepiece but whilst George’s word for a watch was quaint, his means of propulsion was totally 21^stcentury. And, boy, did it shift his boat! Just look at that wake and Nicky’s grin!

Channelling our inner David Bellamy – ‘Here, in the mangroves…..’

To our surprise, since we had expected to enter the mangroves and the frigatebird colony from the north, George took us back into the lagoon through the breach in the wall, explaining en routethat the beach off the Lighthouse Hotel (the wrecked hotel close to our anchorage) used to extend a further 20ft out in front of the hotel.  Now the sea is pretty much at the hotel’s foundations and wearing away the sand and ground below it all the time.  George also explained that the lagoon wall had been breached after several previous hurricanes.  None was as large as the current breach, and the sea rebuilt the wall on each occasion in about 14-18 months.  This breach is clearly going to take a lot longer to repair but George pointed out where the sandbanks are building.

40 foot ISO container which was picked up by Hurricane Irma from
outside the hotel near our anchorage and deposited here, about a mile away

Amongst the mangroves George pointed out another casualty of Hurricane Irma, a 40ft ISO container, which could only have reached its current position, a mile from where it originated, by having spent at least a little time airborne.

Though the mangroves suffered badly at the hands of Hurricane Irma, they are still alive (note the areas of green) and the frigatebird colony has continued to roost here.  Frigatebird numbers are, apparently, much as they were before the 2017 hurricane

The mangroves where the frigatebirds have their colony had suffered much more hurricane damage than those close to where the ISO container had ended up.  Nevertheless, they are still alive and the frigatebirds have continued to roost in them.  Indeed, the Canadian researchers who study the frigatebird colony say that bird numbers are very similar to pre-Irma, at around 30,000 individuals.  George told us of a previous hurricane which had destroyed the mangroves in which the frigatebirds then roosted.  Happily, the birds survived by just migrated a few hundred metres to their current colony but the mangroves in which they had previously nested all died and all that we saw of that old colony location was a few twigs and stumps sticking up into the lagoon.

The birds in this colony are Magnificant Frigatebirds, one of 5 types of frigatebird found globally.  The Magnificant Frigatebird is widespread in the tropicalAtlantic, breeding in colonies in trees in Florida, the Caribbean and the Cape Verde Islands, as well as along the Pacific coast of the Americas from Mexico to Ecuador, including the Galapagos Islands.  We spent quite some time, motoring gently around the colony, observing the birds from surprisingly close up.  Clearly they realised that we posed them no threat as they seemed quite unconcerned by our presence.  We were surprised at how quiet the colony was – had this been a colony of gulls or penguins the noise would have been nearly unbearable.  As it was it seemed virtually silent.  There was also a distinct lack of the dreaded smell of guano. We’re not quite sure why that should have been the case, but it made for a far more pleasant experience!

During the mating season the adult males display their red throat bladders (correctly termed ‘gular pouch’) puffing them up when they see a particularly attractive female.  For further attention-grabbing good measure, the male might also beat his gular pouch with his bill, making a sound like a drum. One male we watched was clearly getting rather chummy with a female he was perched next to.  But he was also eyeing up one of her competition circling overhead and every now and then drummed his throat to try to attract the flying female’s attention too.  Soap opera-like, we were left on tenterhooks and never actually found out which of the female birds (if either) graced the male with her charms.

Male frigate birds are black with a red gular pouch displayed in the mating season.  Females have white chests

Juveniles have white heads and the very young are cute downy bundles of fluff.  It takes so long to rear a chick to maturity that female frigatebirds breed only once every 2 years

Frigate birds are ace aerial acrobats but do not have well oiled feathers and so cannot land on the sea. They hunt fish, notably flying fish, that are chased to the surface by other predators, catching them whilst the fish are airborne or just at the surface.  They also steal fish from other birds, including other frigate birds.

Upside-down jellyfish

But not everything that George wanted to show us was in the mangroves or in the air.  In the shallow, still waters among the mangroves, he pointed out more of the upside-down jellyfish that we had seen in such profusion in the Beef Island lagoon in April.  Here the jellyfish were nothing like as numerous but there was still a good sized colony of them.

Feeling rather like David Attenborough, it was with some reluctance that we agreed with George that we had probably spent enough time in and around the frigatebirds and that we should move on.

Hauling the lobster traps

George’s plan for ‘moving on’ was to find some of his lobster pots and see how much success he had had.  The conditions were not good for locating the pots. George doesn’t buoy them, rather he depends on dropping them into the lagoon (only a meter or two deep at this point) on a known transit and then running along that transit looking down into the water for the trap.  When he sees the trap he hauls it out using a grapnel anchor on a line or, if the water is very shallow, a boathook.

With plenty of scudding clouds and a brisk wind blowing, locating the traps was difficult.  But Nicky was wearing polarised glasses which helped her to see through the rippled water.  We hauled up 3 or 4 traps on as many different transits and recovered a good number of spiny lobsters, though each trap was left with a couple of small ones still inside as bait for further lobsters.

Lunch and dinner, and dinner…. thank you George

And George very kindly gave us a good number of his catch, more than enough for several meals.  He refused additional payment but, as a result of his generosity, lunch was exceedingly good!

Low Bay beach at sunset.  And yes, it is pink, thanks to the myriad small pink shells washed up on it.  The sand is also talcum powder soft….and there’s no-one else around

That evening we had sundowners ashore on the perfectly soft, virtually pink beach off which BV was anchored. The sand was like talcum powder and our feet sank deeply into it, even into the dry sand, not just the sand at the water’s edge.  We’ve never experienced sand like it before.  The pink colour is due to the shells washed up on the beach.  It’s truly beautiful – and the only people there to experience it that evening were the two of us.  Fabulous.  Sadly, if Gaston Brown, the Premier of Antigua and Barbuda has his way and the beachfront areas here are sold off to the developers of hotels and condos, this beautiful beach will be lost, if only because every day ‘the management’ will require the beach to be ‘pisted’, raked over by hand or by machine, so that it looks clean and ready for the new day.  In doing so, the shells that give the beach its lovely pink colour, will be buried under the sand and, whilst the beach may remain soft, it will not remain pink. Everyone’s loss.

Low Bay, Barbuda

Barbuda

It’s a surprisingly long way to Codrington, the principal town on Barbuda, from the anchorage off Low Bay but, with the current breach in the lagoon wall, it takes a lot less time to get to the town than it did only 2 years ago

We didn’t head ashore on the evening of 17 December as it’s a long way to Codrington from the Low Bay anchorage and we didn’t fancy returning after dark.  But the following morning we whizzed ashore in the dinghy, though the ‘whizz’ took 15-20 min.  The lagoon and the breach in the lagoon’s wall are both deep for a dinghy and are quite probably deep enough for BV as well.  But the charting of the lagoon isn’t great and of the breach made by Hurricane Irma hasn’t been charted at all (and, in any case, is steadily being refilled with sand) so taking a yacht into the lagoon without a prior recce in something with less draught would be foolhardy.  As it was, we hit something floating just below the surface with the outboard’s propeller not far off the town quay.  Happily, given that it would have been a very long row back to BV, the damage wasn’t sufficient to stop the outboard working totally but the prop was damaged and the engine did kick up and stop so it was a pretty impressive ‘something’ that we hit.

Codrington.  Some buildings are pretty much fully repaired, others are still in the early stages of repair but many are still too damaged for habitation/use

The quay was quite busy and there were a number of people working and waiting in and around the buildings and aid agency tents (now only partially used?) around the harbour.  We headed into the town and then out along the main road towards the northeast coast and the former Codrington Estate.  We found the town very quiet. Many of the buildings are still in a state of total disrepair and appear not to have been touched since the hurricane and enforced evacuation in September 2017.  But repairs have been made to a good number of homes and, encouragingly, the school was partly operational when we visited, which means that families with school-aged children can return to the island if they wish.  Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go in terms of returning the island to a functioning state.  Of those buildings that had undergone repairs, the majority still had aid agency supplied tents in their gardens and, in most cases these tents appeared to be in daily use.  Repairs were generally haphazard and most frequently made with items supplied by aid agencies.  Little looked as if it would survive another gale, let alone another hurricane.

Outskirts of Codrington.  Most of Barbuda is very low lying and covered in low scrub

We walked out along the main road towards Two Foot Bay, about 3 miles from Codrington on Barbuda’s northeast coast and, as we left the town, we passed a number of buildings where people were working on repairs – an encouraging sign.  The road out from Codrington is very straight, with a line of telegraph poles running along one side.  The electrical cables ran a short distance out from the town and then stopped but there was no obvious sign of any continuing work to connect the remaining poles (and properties) to the electricity network.

Close to ‘The Highlands’ (max elevation 125ft above sea level!), the scrub is more wooded and wild donkeys and semi-wild horses roam freely

It was a long walk out to The Highlands and Two Foot Bay but it was good to stretch our legs and to enjoy the scenery (albeit rather flat).  Once we were clear of the town we also saw a large number of goats, wild donkeys and semi-wild horses, the latter 2 increasing in numbers the closer we got to The Highlands.

In colonial days, Barbuda was leased from the Crown by the Codrington family for the princely sum of a sheep a year. Being so low-lying, Barbuda did not, and still does not, have sufficient rainfall to make it a viable location for growing sugar cane so the island was used to grow crops to provide food for the workers on the Codringtons’ sugar cane estates on Antigua and other islands. The family also visited the island to hunt and, to enable this, deer and boar were introduced to the island; the local population still hunts the descendants of both imported populations. Hunting isn’t the only hang-over from colonial days.  When the island was granted its independence along with Antigua, the land was given to the local population to be held communally.  Thus a local-born Barbudan is permitted to apply to hold (not own) 3 pieces of land; one for his/her home, one for his/her business and one to farm. Companies and non-locals may lease land from the islanders and, say, build a hotel, but they cannot be freeholders of the land.

The Highlands, close to the ruined Codrington Estate

When we reached the end of the road, close to The Highlands, we were somewhat surprised to see that the area had been neatly landscaped.  But this is one of those places where tour guides bring tourists so I guess it behoves someone to make the effort of making the place look pretty.

Two Foot Bay

We continued along on to Two Foot Bay, described in our various guidebooks as a ‘must see’ location. It’s certainly very attractive, a lovely sand beach on the windward side of the island, with the worst of the swell reduced by the off-lying reef.

The Cave to the Highlands

We walked along the beach for half an hour or so before retracing our steps to the ‘Cave to The Highlands’ which we scrambled up through, coming out at the top of the high ground with a fabulous view down along the coast.

View down on Two Foot Bay from The Highlands.  The off-lying reef which protects the beach is clearly visible as the line of white breakers

Somewhere out in this lot there’s a sink hole worthy of a visit!  But after about a kilometre the path was overgrown from disuse and we didn’t really want to get lost in the wooded scrub.  Bottom left: camera-shy land hermit crab

Our guide book talks about a sinkhole, about a 45min walk across The Highlands from the ruined Codrington Estate, that is well-worth the visit.  Well, we found the path and managed to follow it for about 20min but at that point the clearance team had obviously run out of time/stamina/daylight/enthusiasm as it ended abruptly in the scrub.  From our work helping to clear one of the trails at English Harbour only a couple of days before, we knew that there was no way we would be able to fight our way through the scrub to the sinkhole without some decent cutting tools and the knowledge of exactly where we should be heading, so we admitted defeat and headed back towards the road.  But we did see a couple of land hermit crabs on our way which helped to alleviate the disappointment of failing to reach the sinkhole.

We stopped at the Art Café for a beer and a sit down on our way back to Codrington and the dinghy

Hot and footsore, about half way back to Codrington we stopped at the Art Café for a restorative beer and a sit-down. Claire owns and runs the place and has been on the island for about 25 years since she married her Barbudan husband. She frequently spends time in the summer months back in the UK and was in London when Hurricane Irma hit in September 2017.  However, her husband and daughters were still on the island and she said that she spent a very worried day wondering whether or not they had survived the onslaught. Happily, they had.  But she was scathing about the Antiguan Government’s forced evacuation of Barbuda and the slow rate of work to restore services such as water and electricity.  Like many people we have spoken to, Claire believes that the Antiguan Government tried to take advantage of the damage wrought by Hurricane Irma to force Barbuda’s population to move permanently to Antigua, thus potentially allowing a sell-off of the prime real estate to developers.  Similarly, Claire sees the incredibly slow restoration of services – water, electricity, the school – as other levers being used by the Government to keep the population from returning.  And she points out that whilst the Government says that restoring such services takes time and is expensive, it is putting its weight behind building an international sized airport on the island, one that few of the islanders want but which potential developers say is essential……  One could argue that the Barbudans need to make a greater effort to sympathetically develop areas of their island in order to provide jobs and a modicum of economic development such that they are not entirely dependent on Antigua for things such as health services, schooling, transport links.  But a Barbudan might counter that argument by saying that development efforts they make are most often stalled and/or prevented by the Antiguan Government. There’s truth in both sides of the argument, that’s for sure but exactly where the line between the two arguments really sits is a little difficult to tell.

BV in the evening light

After a very interesting talk with Claire, we realised with some shock just how late it was.  We made a hurried departure and, happily, made it back to the harbour in just enough time to return to BV before the sun set.

A fabulous sunset with the nearby islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis visible

And it was a fabulous sunset, and all the better for our still being the only boat in the anchorage.

Low Bay, Barbuda

Sailing to Barbuda

Leaving English Harbour behind us

We needed to make a reasonably prompt start on Monday 17 December as our destination, Low Bay on Barbuda is about 50nm from English Harbour and we needed to arrive whilst the sun was still high enough to see the coral heads as we covered the final 6nm or so up Barbuda’s west coast.  So, we raised the anchor at 0800 and with full main hoisted headed downwind along the south coast of Antigua.

Nahlinoff Falmouth Harbour

Off the entrance to Falmouth Harbour we passed Sir James Dyson’s yacht, Nahlin. We’d last seen her in the Mediterranean – clearly she’s following us!

Sailing up the west coast of Antigua

From the reefs off the southwest corner of Antigua we sailed up the western side of the island past Jolly Harbour. We had rather more wind shadow from the hills than we had expected but had a lovely sail nonetheless.  The water’s quite shallow on this side of the Antigua, which meant that the sea was a beautiful deep turquoise.  It was also a lot clearer than in English Harbour and for much of the way up the west coast we could see the bottom quite clearly.

First glimpses of Barbuda

Clear of Antigua we had more wind again and a great sail up to the south coast of Barbuda.  Barbuda’s very low lying (the ‘Highlands’ in the north are just 125ft high the rest is not far above sea level) so we only saw land when we were very close, perhaps just 4 miles away.

Off Palmetto Point

Close in off Palmetto Point, the southwesterly point of Barbuda, we lowered the sails and switched to motoring. Our pilot book was written before Hurricane Irma struck and it talks of the route up the west coast being quite shallow, running inside 9 Foot Reef.  Having not been here before we wanted to take things a bit cautiously.  We expected depths to be poorly charted after the hurricane and wanted to be able to slow down, or even stop and go back, easily.

Making our way north along the west coast of Barbuda – miles and miles of unspoilt sandy beach

As it happened we found, both on the way in and the way out, that depths were more than adequate, the minimum we saw was about 3.5m as we crossed a small bar, and most of the time we had a minimum of 6m.  Sailing along this bit of coast would be quite a reasonable thing to do.  Our biggest concern was the amount of surf on the shore – would we end up with a rolly anchorage?

(Top) the breach in the wall of the Codrington Lagoon caused by Hurricane Irma.  (Bottom) Lighthouse resort

About 4nm north of Palmetto Point we came to the remains of the Lighthouse Resort.  Pre-Irma this had been a smart boutique hotel and restaurant but the hurricane has changed all that.  As well as opening a large breach in the sand wall of the Codrington Lagoon, Hurricane Irma removed all the sand from the 12 foot wide beach in front of the hotel, undermining the buildings which resulted in the collapse of large portions of the hotel complex.  But then there is a parable about building one’s house on foundations of sand…..

Anchored off the beach at Low Bay…..

We went about a mile further up the coast before dropping anchor.  By this stage there was virtually no surf on the beach – the further north you go up the coast the more the curve of the coast and the reefs at the top of the island provide shelter from the prevailing swell.  Still, it’s not a place to be in a strong northerly ground swell.

…….miles and miles of sandy beach in both directions

Anchored in 3.5m, a long way off the beach, we sat back and surveyed our bit of paradise.

Anchored in paradise……

…..and no-one else around

Beautiful as it was though, we knew that we couldn’t just spend our days lazing on BV, so we inflated the dinghy and planned an expedition ashore.

Low Bay, Barbuda

English Harbour 2 Antigua

The Pillars Restaurant (originally part of the dockyard sail loft) in the inner part of English Harbour

Whilst we were in St John’s we had hoped to visit the large Epicurian supermarket in the town but had not actually found it.  So, when we returned to English Harbour we took the dinghy on a shopping trip to the Covent Garden supermarket at the top end of the harbour.  It’s a small supermarket but reasonably well provisioned and there’s a convenient dinghy dock just outside it.  But the best thing about it are the views of the upper reaches of Nelson’s Dockyard, particularly of the Pillars Restaurant, that you have from the dinghy as you make your way to the supermarket dock.

The charter yacht base (Sunsail and The Moorings) to the right of the picture, rubbing shoulders with some very swish yachts, some of which are also available for charter – at a somewhat higher price!

Back on BV and food stowed away, we used our new Digicel card in our unlocked AT&T mobile phone to try to connect to the internet (successful) and then have the phone produce a wifi hotspot so that we could have both our computers online at the same time.  This latter task was singularly unsuccessful – and hugely frustrating – and by the time we realised the problem it was too late to visit the Copper and Lumber to use their wifi.  Consequently, it was not until the following morning, that we discovered that our unlocked AT&T phone whilst fully unlocked did not have full functionality unlocked to us, specifically the use of the hotspot. Apparently, this is not unusual with US carriers – be warned!  So, with this little bombshell dropped, Nicky took another bus ride into St John’s to see if she could somewhere buy a phone that had never been locked to any carrier. I posted some blogs and then returned to BV to carry out more post passage chores, primarily fixing the batten car on the mainsail.

Nicky arrived back very late in the afternoon. After visiting 3 shops and carrying out quite a lot of online research, she had eventually purchased a new phone. This one had never been locked to a carrier and, with our Digicel card, provided all the services we required. However, half way back to English Harbour on the bus, the phone started to malfunction, with the screen flashing on and off about once a second.  So, she had returned to the shop only to find that they had no more of the same phone in stock.  ‘Come back tomorrow’ she was told.  ‘We will replace it with a newer, better model’……

Nicky eventually got back to English Harbour at 1725.  Twenty minutes later, showered and changed, we were both on time on parade for the evening’s meeting of the Royal Navel Tot Club, on Wednesdays held at the Hot Hot Hot Spot bar in teh dockyard.  We were guests of Mike Briggs, whom we had last met at the Tot Club in March when we had visited English Harbour with Charlotte.  He had recognised BV at anchor and during the afternoon had rowed over to invite us over to the Tot Club’s evening gathering.  We had a lovely evening chatting to him, renewing old acquaintances from our previous visit and making new friends.  As ever, time vanished remarkably quickly but we were pleased to accept an invitation to Friday’s gathering.

The anchorage off Pigeon Beach in Falmouth Harbour

The next day Nicky returned to St John’s, frustratingly her third trip there in as many days, and collected a new mobile phone which, much to the relief of both of us, continued to work perfectly even beyond the outskirts of the town.  We celebrated with a walk into Falmouth to see what excitements the small town and yacht club had to offer and to take a look at the yacht anchorage off Pigeon Beach.  We thought that the anchorage looked nice enough, and certainly there was plenty of space and, probably, a fairly constant wind direction, unlike in Freeman Bay where BV seemed to sit at all angles, but the scenery is definitely a step up in English Harbour.

Freeman Bay from the north showing BV in her original position close to Freeman Point (Freeman Point is on the left of the picture, abutting Galleon Beach)

Having recced the anchorage off Pigeon Beach we returned to English Harbour to discuss BV’s position.  Whilst Nicky had been on one of her many trips to St John’s, I had dived on the anchor and seen (through the surprisingly sandy water) that the anchor was dug in well, though the chain snaked across an area of rocks and stones.  This explained the night-time graunching noises from the anchor chain that had been disturbing our sleep.  My dive might explain where the noise was coming from but it didn’t make it any easier to sleep through.  Nicky, in particular, was becoming irritated by it and we both realised that we needed to move.

View into the southern end of Freeman Bay from BV’s new (quiet) anchorage

We were considering a move to Pigeon Bay (though the scenery was nothing like as good as that in English Harbour!), when a space opened up at the south end of Freeman Bay.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, we rapidly up-anchored and took up residence in the new space.  The scenery remained good and the anchor chain was a lot quieter as it rested on sand rather than rock but the wind shadow/swirl at this end of the bay means that yachts spin around in all directions, seemingly randomly, which can cause problems.  In fact, a couple of days later we found ourselves uncomfortably close to a newly arrived catamaran, which we had thought had anchored a good distance away from us.  Happily, the owner agreed that our 2 boats were getting too close together and, since they had arrived after us, moved to a new location a bit further away.

Tot Club meeting in the Copper and Lumber – a great venue

Photos post event – where has everyone gone?  To the bar, of course!

Friday evening found us enjoying another tot with the Tot Club, this time in the Copper and Lumber.  The bar/restaurant/hotel was originally built as the dockyard store for (guess what?) copper (for sheathing ships’ bottoms) and lumber and the buildings were beautifully restored in the mid-twentieth century.  The open air courtyard in the centre of the building is a hugely atmospheric ‘room’ and a fabulous setting for the Friday tot.

Meal out at ‘Life on the Corner’ in Falmouth.  It was Friday so it had to be fish and the mahi-mahi and chips was excellent value and even better eating!

And then we were invited to join a group for dinner at ‘Life on the Corner’ one of several bar/restaurants in the centre of Falmouth.  We thought it surprisingly busy but later agreed that this was deservedly so.  The food was delicious and very reasonably priced. Certainly a place to return to.

Maintaining the Charlotte Battery Trail as part of the Tot Club ‘Keep Fit’ – ‘destroying nature to preserve history’!

We had originally planned to leave English Harbour at the weekend but John Duffy’s announcement at Wednesday’s Tot Club meeting had piqued our interest.  ‘Keep fit on Sunday’ he’d said.  It turned out that ‘Keep Fit’ meant hack and slash to keep the walking trails clear and since we had very much enjoyed some of the trails the last time we had visited we had decided to take part to put in some pay-back.  So, bright and early on Sunday 16 December, John, Mark and his son Al, and Nicky and I met to take on the trail to Charlotte Battery.  The path was surprisingly clear but, given the rate at which stuff grows in Antigua, it wouldn’t be long before ‘surprisingly clear’ became ‘virtually impassable’, so we set to with loppers and a strimmer.

Hot work – happily there were plenty of clouds about to keep the sun from beating down too strongly

We cut down a lot of vegetation and made a good impact on preserving access to the right of way – a right of way that has been in use at least since the British first came to the island. Disappointingly, many of the people we have met during our stay in Antigua have talked about corruption at the top of the island’s Government.  This comes in many forms but the most popular seems to be acquiring land illegally and/or at too low a price.  The land, even if it is in the National Park no development area, is then developed and then either sold on or otherwise used to line the pockets of the politician in question.  By maintaining the many rights of way across the National Park, the Tot Club is trying to ensure that the paths are used and that they remain rights of way, which also has the benefit of making it more difficult for unscrupulous people to claim that the land does not belong to or is not used by anyone.

We had a lovely view across Freeman Bay anchorage (with a pretty blue yacht 3 or 4 from the left!) from the Charlotte Battery trail

And, of course, one of the benefits of maintaining and using the paths is that you get some great walking and lovely views as well.

(Top left) driving down the Charlotte Battery Trail after the morning’s work.  We couldn’t have done this before starting the job!  (Top right) The Galley Bar at Nelson’s Dockyard.  (Bottom)  Working party recovery beers

After just a few hours’ work we had the Charlotte Battery trail sufficiently cleared for John’s exacting standards and retired back to the Galley Bar for a well-earned beer.  Maybe not quite the post-workout drink that your average naval PTI (physical training instructor) would recommend but very much in the spirit of the Royal Navy of Nelson’s era!

Nelson’s Dockyard in the sun

So, with it being our last day in English Harbour for this visit, I took some more pictures with the sun out…..

Hammock tester – it’s a hard job but someone’s got to do it!

…….and then spent a hard-working afternoon testing out the ship’s hammock.  After all, I needed to rebuild my strength – we were planning a 45nm sail to Barbuda in the morning!

English Harbour, Antigua