On May 3, the alarm goes off at 6:00 am and we sail out of Deshaies Bay at around 7:00 am on our way to Antigua, some 40 nautical miles north. It will be our last crossing, because as mentioned before, the Pantera will be shipped to Europe from Antigua. With a lot of current and at the end also wind against us, we arrive in Freeman’s Bay, the bay in front of English Harbour, just before dark. We are still in the last days of the Antigua Sailing Week and there are quite a few ships in the harbor. From afar we can see the matches in front of English Harbor the next days. The phenomenon of ‘live music’ is also fully present here and will remain so at the few ports and the many resorts here on Antigua. We regularly hear “Killing me softly” blaring. Antigua is the island with the 365 beaches (for every day of the year 1); many of these beaches have resorts surrounded by palm trees. The security of these resorts always makes it clear to us that we are not welcome or the ONLY GUESTS sign does. So, we stay in the bays with the locals, who often don’t swim, but just stand or float in the water.
English Harbor looks very chic; the staff is decked out in beautiful uniforms or neat khaki (short) pants with polo. The harbor was created between 1745 and 1789 and was then the ‘Britain’s main naval station in the Lesser Antilles’ and was completely restored after the 2nd World War. The dockyard on the harbor is named Nelson’s Dockyard after Horatio Nelson, the British admiral and hero. We’re clearing in here and it goes pretty smoothly, if you don’t care too much about the lady in uniform who hangs in her chair behind her desk and follows the daily soaps. It does cost about 80 US dollars though.
From English Harbor in the south of the island we sail around the island counterclockwise. We anchor in Nonsuch Bay, Dickenson Bay and Deep Bay before sailing north again via Jolly Harbor (where we can see the lunar eclipse on May 15th) and find beautiful anchorages between the reefs in very quiet places. Here again the most luxurious resorts. You have to be careful with the reefs and shallows, but the captain guides us through them excellently.
Our mindset is slowly changing. We are here at our final destination in the Caribbean and ‘traveling’ turns into having a holiday; we don’t have to go any further. That takes some adaptations and we are also slowly focusing on the end of our journey, which is now getting closer and closer.
We’ve left the “mainland” of Antigua, which looks a bit dull from the water, for what it is, as we can still do this while we’re still here when the Pantera ships. We will then rent a house. Then, when the big boat is almost in Southampton, we follow the Pantera and pick up again from Southampton to cross the channel from England to France and then Belgium and then ……… back in the Netherlands.
However, things turn out differently. The loading of the Pantera was initially planned between the 15 and 30 of May, this will later become June 1 and 2. We have already anchored near St. John’s (where the embarkation will take place) when we hear a week before June 1-2 that the shipment has been moved to June 17. Huh??? Without any explanation. Always a very friendly email, but no explanation how or what. Now you will think, “Come on, it’s the Caribbean”, but this is a company from the Netherlands, to be precise from Amsterdam Westpoort!!
You can jump high or low, you just have to deal with it and that’s what we do. We will just go to the house in the last days of May and early June, which we have been looking forward to. It takes some getting used to from your own “boat house” to a house with a view of the bay where we sailed before. With a rented car we tour the 280 km2 island. We again see a huge contrast between the resorts/the Caribbean as we know it from the holiday advertisements and the villages around it. There seems to be a great contrast between rich and poor on the island. Fruit stalls and mango vendors dot the roads. So many that you wonder if they will sell anything with so much competition. Everywhere we see churches, Moravian churches, the 7th day Adventists, the Pentecostal Church, the Presbyterian churches, Jehovah’s, Salvation Army etc. etc.
It all feels very American with the street signs, greetings like “How are you today?” and the immense supermarkets with prices that only the rich can afford. And it is very different from the French islands where the roads were good. Here we have to watch out for potholes in the road and this reminds us of Suriname, just like driving on the left does.
When we arrive at a nature park for a walk/hike (to have a beautiful view of the bay below and the pineapple fields), it turns out that we have to pay 15 US dollars per person for the entrance. Quite a lot for a walk of just under 2 hours, we feel. When we fill in the registration form with our details and our (local) telephone number, we get the local price of 10 EC dollars per person, because apparently we have been staying on the island for a while and fall under the local rate. For tourists it is therefore 5 times as expensive!
When we are back on the boat after a week, we spend the time sailing again until June 17th. Finally, the Pantera boards the transport ship on Sunday 19 June. The next day, after almost 7(!) weeks, we fly Antigua to Sint Maarten to spend another week there before we also fly to Europe to receive the boat in Southampton and sail the last part home.
