Anyway, we set off in the interim with the intention of visiting Basse-Terre, the capital, but we gave up after a number of unsuccessful attempts to anchor off the town on a ledge a few metres wide with a vertical drop-off to a depth of over 200 hundred metres.  This worked to our advantage because we sailed on to Les Saintes. These are an enchanting group of small islands just south of Guadeloupe with daily excursion boats from there just like the islands off Brittany.  It was then a short run back to Point ŕ Pětre for repairs to sails, spray hood, dinghy, davits and 101 other small items. 

After a week it was time to return to Antigua to pick up Sarah’s sister and brother-in-law, Joanna and Tony Ferguson.  We had invited them to join us for a cruise to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.  When Tony had been looking at flights out to the Caribbean, I had glanced at the chart and suggested they arrive in Antigua and depart from Tobago.  After all it was only a couple of inches on the chart.  However when I started working on an itinery for the 15 days they were to be with us, it was destined to be a longer cruise than I thought!

Anyway we moored stern-to in English Harbour and collected them from the airport, having got the journey down to a fine art.  There is only one signpost on Antigua as far as we can make out but the road map helpfully identifies the position of the two sets of traffic lights and all the gas stations.  It being a Thursday, we took them up to Shirley Heights for a rum punch, steel band and the spectacular view of the harbour.  We decided to make the most of the hire car and so the following day we drove through the rain forest to Jolly Harbour for supplies.  Later in the evening we had a celebration meal in ‘Abracadabra’.

Our first sail was back to Deshaies in Guadeloupe so that Joanna, Sarah and Tony could visit the lovely botanical gardens situated above the town.  We lingered a day and then drifted on down to Dominica and anchored in Prince Rupert Bay.  The choice of Portsmouth for our first visit to Dominica was not one of our best as the town is rather seedy and run down.  So after a quick look we decided to move on, but I needed to clear in and out.  By now, of course, I was well used to the bureaucracy of checking the boat and crew into and out of each island.  Without making fun of the formalities, there seemed to be a number of rules common to all the Caribbean islands:

  1. You have to hit an opening time for customs and separately immigration, which were often not in the same offices and which could be situated some distance apart.
  2. You needed to plan not less than half a day for the exercise.
  3. You had to keep a sense of humour at all times (for example: in Antigua the six copies of the form required for the boat inbound and outbound, and two each for every crew member had to be stamped by both customs and immigration.  So a visit to Antigua resulted in two passport stamps, 24 stamps for the boat and four each for the crew customs and immigration forms, all individually initialled).
  4. The rules change from day to day depending on the whim of the customs and immigration officers on duty.
  5. The rules are different port to port on the same island and completely different on each island.
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The First 2700 miles of Caribbean Cruising, February – August 2007

So much for a rest! Sitting here in Martinique a month after the official start of the hurricane season, it seems a very long time ago that we first arrived in Antigua.  Before David left us to return to England, we were moored stern-to on English Harbour’s Dockyard Marina when we were hailed ‘Are you really from Dartmouth?’  It turned out to be neighbours of ours, Colin and Angie Campbell, who were visiting their daughter – a small world indeed!

Our plotter has a log on it and when it prints it looks like a child’s scribbling over the Lesser Antilles as we seem to have been up and down like a yo-yo.  We set off initially towards Tortola via Nevis and St Kitts as we had never before visited the BVIs.

Both Nevis and St Kitts were laid back, friendly islands with high mountains dropping into the sea.  On Nevis next to the up-market Four Seasons Hotel an enterprising guy called ‘Sunshine’ had set up a beach bar and his speciality rum drinks called ‘killer bees’ were just that!  We didn’t linger long before setting off for Road Harbour and as we sailed into the Sir Francis Drake channel, Tom said “it looks like the Solent during Cowes week” – well true enough but at least 20C warmer!  Our first impressions were that we had arrived in the Bahamas because everything was very American – especially the prices!  I don’t think we had appreciated just how active the charter market was here but then Moorings alone had a base with over 200 yachts.

Inevitably this put pressure on good anchorages and moorings and contrasted significantly to what we had experienced previously in the Caribbean.  It meant that in order to find special places it was necessary to ‘read between the lines’ of the cruising guide.  This is something we will be better at next time around.  A visit to the BVIs is apparently not complete without eating lobster at Anegada.  This is an island that is first recognised by palm trees growing out of the sea, because it is so flat.  The approach is quite shallow for us with a draft of 2.3m and we duly anchored in the bay showing less than 3m.  Now it would be true to say that I have largely ignored tides since departing the Canaries because the tidal range is generally so small in the Caribbean.  It was only after we touched bottom that I looked to find that the tidal range in Anegada was in excess of a metre.  No harm done other than to the skipper’s pride!

After a brief 5 days we set off for St Martin for some French cuisine.  We had chartered previously from here and were delighted that it was much as we remembered.  The contrast between the ex English islands and the French Antilles is stark.  As we were later to confirm in Guadaloupe and Martinique, to all intents and purposes you have arrived in France.  The supermarkets are well stocked, the roads are covered with tarmac and for the most part it is like being home in Mougins.


We spent 3 pleasant days in Marigot bay before it was time to head back towards Antigua for Tom to fly home.  It was a rough ride overnight into the teeth of the trade winds but in the morning we were rewarded when Sarah spotted a pod of whales.  We anchored in English Harbour so we could have a final meal together in ‘Abracadabra’, an Italian restaurant that is just outside the dockyard and which had survived there for 17 years.

Tom left us so that he could attend interviews and he subsequently accepted a position as a trainee accountant with a London firm starting the middle of August.  Sarah and I were on the boat together by ourselves for the first time since June last year and although we missed Tom’s company, it was not going to be for long!

We set off for Guadeloupe and spent a couple of days in Deshaies where we hired a car and drove to Point ŕ Pětre via a magnificent coast road and then through the rain forest.  As advertised in the cruising guide, Point ŕ Pětre has a huge marina with lots of facilities and, of course is the finishing point for the Route de Rhum transatlantic race.  There were a number of big tri-marans both on the hard and in the water, having stayed here after the last race.  We decided it would be sensible to come here to affect some repairs, and so we booked our selves in.


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