Picking up on the last posts’ illegitimate child analogy, we should talk about Antigua and Barbuda. They are one country, but only because a husband and wife brought children from a previous life to their marriage. I am speaking in analogies, but there is plenty of drama in this region; and like so many in-law relationships, and you have to wonder if life would be better apart. But let’s take the side of the marriage counselor, trying to see both sides and encouraging everyone to find common ground. I hope you will agree in the end that it is an altruistic goal!
Let’s start with Antigua. First off, there are lots of tonque-twisting ways to pronounce the name, but it’s most commonly called ‘ann-TEE-gah’. If you arrive by air or cruise ship, you’ll be introduced to the island by way of St John’s. It’s an urban metropolis, and if you are into cities, well then you might find a sliver of appeal to this one. Let’s face it, most people don’t come to the islands for the city life but, instead, to get away from it. If you come by boat, by that I mean a boat much smaller than a cruise ship, then you might likely point your bow to one of two harbors – Jolly Harbor or Falmouth Harbor. Jolly Harbor is still big and urban by the standards of most sailor types, but if you are finishing up an overnight passage like we did last year, its broad outer bay is perfect for dropping an anchor while recovering from a sleep-deprived brain.
Falmouth Harbor also has a large anchorage area open to the fresh cooling ocean breezes. But its clientele is decidedly more well-heeled. On any given evening, the big super yachts and tall ships that line the shores will light up their rigging, making it seem like Christmas in the Caribbean. I think they could definitely alter the course of Santa’s sleigh with their spectacular show!
Adjacent to Falmouth is the smaller, more exclusive English Harbor where, famously, Horatio Nelson located the British Navy back in the 1700’s. It is now named Nelson’s Dockyard and the government has done an admirable job restoring the old stone buildings and presenting the history that goes along with them. The British Navy established a robust ship repair facility here, with remnants of stone towers that held up a sail loft, and big capstans, like turnstiles, that were used to careen ships on their sides to do hull repairs. Today, if you need boat work done, you’ll find many excellent technicians. But given the size of the boating fleet here, I was surprised how hard it was to find a decent marine chandlery. As well, the single main grocery store was short on basic supplies. This is not a harbor geared towards DIY boat maintenance crews or those cooking their own meals onboard!
Wealth is flaunted quite freely in the Falmouth/English Harbor part of the island, but if this is all you see, you haven’t experienced the depth that the island possesses. We ventured around to the eastern side of the island, an orientation to the wind that is rarely a good idea on most Caribbean islands because wind-whipped waves pound the shore and make any anchorage quite untenable. But if you explore an island like Antigua that has a few off-lying reefs, these shallows break up the swell coming in from the Atlantic and they can make for a unique experience. In fact, there are so many off-lying reefs, you have to cover many miles to find a safe passage through the shallows and into the protected inner waters, as you can see from the chart below.
At aptly-named Green Island anchorage, we reveled in the calm conditions, both above and below the water. Clingy orange sargasso weed blanketed the sea surface as we snorkeled underneath, making it feel like an impending sepia storm system had descended upon us.
Further up the east coast, the intriguing name of Great Bird Island serves up more splendor under the sea. We snorkeled over a shallow seabed blanketed with conch. You’ll often see conch shells in the Caribbean, but usually it is the spoils of a fisherman who has already harvested the meat. Here, each shell was home to a live, timid animal, eager to squeeze further into the depths of its home to get away from prying eyes. We moved on, to pry our eyes on a restless ray, fanning its body to stir up a sand cloud. It wasn’t clear if this was a fear reaction or just their way of farming for food. If only I had opted for a marine biology course in college!
Exiting this minefield of reefs and rabid rays of the eastern shore forced us to both be glued to our navigation tools – one person on the chartplotter, the other using their eyeballs to read the colors of the water. We were headed to Barbuda some 30 nautical miles north, but Antiqua is not one to release you from its bonds with a simple ‘see ya later’. More reefs were strewn across the north shore, making me wonder how anyone in the pre-GPS era could have safely found refuge in these waters.
We were blessed with an unwavering and thankfully very typical easterly trade wind, making the daytime passage north a sailing joy to behold. Barbuda’s topology couldn’t be more different from Antigua. Perhaps that is where the familial row had its roots. Caribbean islands like Antigua, with cloud piercing volcanic peaks, make navigating between island chains a mere matter of scanning the horizon. From most locations, you can see the peak of the next island north of you, and likewise to the south. But Barbuda is unique. It’s a field of sand just above sea level, and as we all know when playing at the beach, that sand, while being pushed by air and water, wants to level out. As a consequence, you can only see the island when you are a few miles off. If you are lucky, you might see an azure shadow in the clouds above, a reflection of the many miles of tropical beaches, thinly populated, if at all, by the human race. But that thin population is changing. In the 1600’s, the island was taken over by the Codrington family under a lease from the British Crown. The terrain was not amenable to sugar plantations and, while there were slaves imported to the island, records indicate that it was a less humanly harsh environment, with cattle ranching being the predominant yet small scale industry. Efforts to expand the business by the Codringtons proved difficult with the climate. About this time, amongst mixed signals from the British Isles, the native population proceeded to follow a Barbudan communal land system. Under this scheme, private ownership of land was not allowed. The land, and the island in general, belonged to all of the residents. Fast forward to 2017. Hurricane Irma came roaring in from the Atlantic, leveling nearly every standing object on Barbuda. With no mountains to stand as protection, Mother Nature had her unrestricted way. Thankfully, nearly all of the residents had been evacuated to Antigua, avoiding a horrendous death toll. But much of the island died, all the same. The prime minister of the two-island nation, Gaston Browne, seated in Antigua, eager to dispense with communal land policies and encourage private investment, forced would-be returning residents to pay for and assume bank loans for the land they wished to re-occupy. This of course didn’t sit well with Barbudans. Many gave up and settled in with relatives in Antigua. Others returned to the island, only to find that high-profile foreigners, their money, and their sleek helicopters were taking over the island. We dropped the hook off Coco Bay where a few single story homes stretched out across the dunes with floor to ceiling windows and room for clearly more than just a single family. The thwat-thwat-thwat above confirmed my suspicions that this was the epicenter of new wealth on the island as sleek, all-black helicopters seemed to be doing an oval race course circuit between Antigua and a heliport just beyond the dunes.
Coco Bay, Barbuda
We were here to welcome the arrival of our friends Mike and Beth, previous guests of ours in Croatia. At the ferry landing, heavily-laden trucks were being offloaded from a recently arrived cargo barge, casting road dust around an old island skiff whose signage encouraged passers-by to not forget the communal ownership roots of Barbuda.
The tug-of-war was palpable. If you were an islander with construction skills, the backlog for building shoreside mansions would seem to be too tantalizing to pass up. But that cherished tradition of communal ownership was being chipped away as the world’s uber-wealthy continued to buy up land and fly in by private helicopter to check on their home’s progress while dining on high-priced sushi.
It’s a pattern that has been repeated in other developing islands of the Caribbean. Canouan, in the St Vincent and Grenadines region, is a good example. But here in Barbuda, with a fading altruistic history of communal ownership, it feels especially raw.
With Barbuda’s future uncertain, and locked in a choke hold by its bigger sibling, we set out to explore this unique sandy spit of an island before its treasures disappeared forever. A walk down the beach, washed clean and pure like the backdrop of a screensaver, we found Shack-A-Kai, where you dine al-fresco on delicious barbecued lobsters cooked out of a perennially-common half-shaped oil drum of a grill. Rum drinks are served over ice scooped out of a cooler – there is no electricity here save for a few battery-operated table lamps.
When the sun goes down here and elsewhere in the Caribbean, it is different than in the northern latitudes. It gets dark immediately. There is no lingering twilight. It’s time to collect yourself, drag your dinghy out through the surf and find your craft. As can happen in these pristine Caribbean settings, the conversation got away from us and we were one of the last parties to leave. We were left to find our way to our dinghy with the aid of a spotlight. We discussed how it would be very important, once the dinghy was floating, to climb in and get out through the surf as quick as possible. Mike and I had our wives jump in the bow first as we gave one last push before the water depth dropped quickly over our heads. I could hear a wave approaching but in the inky darkness, we could not tell its size or timing. As the rumbling approached, we all seemed to have the same instinct, “Hold on tight!” The bow of the dinghy rose up precipitously. In an instant, the dinghy flipped over end-for-end, tossing us and all the dinghy’s contents into the water. Confusion reigned. Beth was under the dinghy. Then another wave came and flipped the dinghy over again and I became trapped under it, worried I wouldn’t find air or simply the knowledge of which way was up. Then, abruptly, I was out from under it, with my feet touching the sand. I could make out a faint glow of the dinghy, upside down in the shallows, but surging out into the surf as each wave’s rushing water receded to the sea. Karen and Mike were up on the beach, but there was no sign of Beth. Mike called out to her, in that primal kind of scream summoned from deep in one’s soul, hoping this isn’t the end. Nervous moments passed, and then she surfaced in the shallows and hustled ashore. Saving the dinghy and its contents was our next priority. A single oar floated by in knee-deep water, which we rescued quickly. Fortuitously, Mike found the spotlight, equally surprised that it turned on, making our recovery attempts much easier. Lots of personal belongings were gone, but we had two oars, a light, a few lifejackets and a floating dinghy. We waited for a calm spell, and pushed ourselves back out into the surf, this time making our way beyond the breakers swiftly with the aid of the two oars. I lowered the outboard into the water, but as hard as I tried, I could not get it started. The multiple inversions must have flooded the engine. We resolved to row, feeling our way along out past the waves, trying to identify our boat’s anchor light amongst the many boats, all of which seemed an eternity away at the slow speed were were able to make. Four people in an inflatable with a dead engine won’t come close to winning the Head of the Charles. Suddenly, we struck something hard in the water, forcing the starboard side to tilt up at an acute angle and tossing Karen, who was trying to sit on the very edge of the transom so I could get a full oar stroke in, backwards into the water. Mike and I seized her shoulders and launched her back head first into the bottom of the dinghy. We had run over the jagged top of a rocky reef.
Finally, we made it to the field of anchored boats and to Sea Rose, soaked to the bone and shivering both from the cold and the fear. It was one of the most traumatic boating experiences we have ever had. After we all changed into dry clothes, we took stock of the situation and what went wrong. Beth, while under the dinghy, had been slammed into the beach sand, plugging up her hearing on one side. She scrambled around for a backup pair of glasses. Mike’s back was giving him acute pain, likely from the dinghy landing on top of it. Karen was bleeding from where the reef punctured her leg. Cleaning up the outboard engine seemed like good therapy for me. Safe to say, we would have done – and we will do – a lot of things different next time.
On the northern portion of Barbuda sits the renowned and hopefully land-grab-protected Frigate Bird Sanctuary. Shockingly, over 200,000 of these ungainly looking tropical creatures call Barbuda home, the second largest population behind the nature gem of the Galapagos. Their split tail makes them easy to spot as they wheel about high overhead. We had been seeing them on occasion during our passage through the eastern Caribbean but never in these numbers. Their other distinct feature is the male’s large red pouch under the neck. They inflate this to get – you guessed it – the attention of the female crowd, and the show was well along in its production when we visited by mandatory guided tour boat.
Our guide picked us up off the inlet to Codrington Lagoon. During Hurricane Irma, the narrow sandy shore that separated this lagoon from the sea broke through. As the sands continue to shift, the waters here have become very tricky to navigate around. We anchored Sea Rose far off the beach at Low Bay, watching in admiration as our young guide sped over the shallow bar showing no concern whatsoever.
Low Bay, due to its exposed nature, can be a rough place to overnight. But the alternate anchorages were many hours away. We chose to settle in for the night, making a quick run ashore before sunset to an isolated stretch of sand separated on both sides by sand bars. Here, the only footsteps were ours, the only thoughts, of peace — the world’s problems, too distant to concern. In the morning, the seas had risen, our private island now awash in white water from ocean to lagoon. It was not hard to picture it washing away completely in due time.
Let us hope, as Barbuda’s sands shift below her feet, that she still holds fast to her precious culture, her fragile gems.
