Antigua is known to us as the land of rainbows. It certainly has been in the last month, with the most beautiful rainbows shining both by day and by night. The moon rainbow was really just a series of greys with the sea and island backdrop well lit by the full moon. Since then the weather has deteriorated to gale force winds and torrential rain. It is warm though! Something we are not used to in Scotland. It is still shirts and shorts even though they get wet occasionally. This time last year we were in Tobago and it poured with rain most of the time. It is still the rainy season here in the Caribbean.

The weather hasn’t dampened our spirits however and we have had a really happy month based at Jolly Harbour, with Stephen and Susan, and Alison, Andy and Sarah, visiting for Christmas and New Year. Alison, (Margaret’s sister) and family arrived on Christmas Eve on the big bird. Well, one of the big birds actually, since about three 747s arrive in Antigua every other day. They are not spaced out in their arrivals of course, and thus the airport is deserted in the morning and very overcrowded in the afternoon. There are no T.V. monitors to show take off and landing schedules and you can never hear the announcements. Twas ever thus. There was only one exit so we couldn’t miss them when they eventually came through customs and immigration.

Christmas day celebrations started with an early morning swim, to which we walked. We were lent a house and dock for the time we had the family with us, due to the debacle concerning the house we had paid a deposit on, and which has still not come to our ownership. This did not mar the family holiday however and our embarrassment was certainly alleviated by the loan of the house.

We had decorated the house with pictures of sailing ships bought at a Bermuda church fair for $5 each, and also a small wooden Christmas tree festooned with lights, from the same source. A ribbon for the boat bought at great expense in St Martins and tinsel bought in Jolly Harbour, completed the effect, which was quite homely and pretty.

We hired a minibus for the first week of their holiday and collected Stephen and Susan from the airport, later on Christmas Day. They didn’t seem to arrive with all the other passengers and eventually we received a text from Susan, which told us that their luggage was lost. They had flown to New York on Christmas Eve and then on to Antigua on Christmas Day. Continental Airlines had sent their luggage from New York to St Martins instead of Antigua. The check in girl had obviously celebrated too hard on Christmas Eve. As a small aside the local airline, which operates propellor driven aircraft, is called LIAT, or ‘Luggage In Another Terminal’.

Stephen and Susan completed our guests, and sans luggage, we drove back to Jolly Harbour for Christmas Dinner. The fresh turkey was perfectly cooked and accompanied by sausage and sage and onion stuffing, bread sauce and crispy bacon. Followed of course by flaming Christmas pud and brandy butter. Everybody had a hand in the cooking and on this occasion too many cooks certainly didn’t spoil the broth. So, the traditional British Christmas Dinner in Antigua was much enjoyed, and you thought we were living off coconuts, pineapples and papaya! We have had these too of course.

On Boxing Day we had a BBQ and Andy showed his expertise with the chicken and steaks and sausages. They were perfectly cooked. We had bought the BBQ at Walmart in Norfolk, Virginia for a very reasonable price. It has paid for itself already and cooks delicious food (with Andy’s help)! Our guests for the BBQ were Ed (previously from Essex G.B.) and Tom and Marg ( previously from Tighnabruich, and the Kaimes Hotel). They are all presently operating charter vessels out of Antigua, which seems a very pleasant way of earning a living.

The following few days were trips around the island in a hired minibus. The numerous potholes, hills, corners and unmade roads required travel sickness pills for the passengers. We even found a number of unmade roads that were not on the map. A map is essential in Antigua where there are no sign posts to speak of. We counted just one in the centre of the island, next to a petrol station, pointing to St Johns, the capital. The other three roads entering the junction had no signs!

We visited Nelson’s dockyard and paid our money to enter as tourists. The funny thing is that if you enter by boat you don’t have to pay! Alistair and Sandy Dunn’s beautiful 130 foot ketch, Victoria of Strathearn, was there to pick up a charter. Our family were very pleased to be shown around the yacht, which we had sailed on, in Booth Bay in Maine, in the Big Boat Regatta. We visited the museum, which has the old seagull outboard in it, invented, so the sign says, for those yachtsmen too lazy to row to the shore!

Lunch in the Admirals Inn was eventful, when Susan discovered a small tree frog in Margaret’s coca cola. After much coercion, we eventually received a grudging apology and also the drinks were on the house. The way the waitress acted, it would seem that there were frogs in peoples drinks all the time! The manageress, though, when she eventually turned up, swore that nothing like that had happened in her thirty years in the business. ‘Lordy Lordy’. If you come to Antigua, check your drinks for the phantom tree frog! We think they are going to make a feature of it! The food, however, was excellent! And much to be recommended.

We visited Long Beach on the North side of the island and had a traditional hamburger lunch, with chips (or french fries as they call them here, since chips are crisps in the United States. Although how you get a chocolate chip cookie we don’t know, since they are nothing like chips or crisps and are very good snacks during night watches.)

We visited the Devil’s Bridge, which is a fallen cave. The original cliff still spans across the sea. They say the devil lives underneath, ready to snatch souls who jump into the water from there. Regrettably, a number of runaway slaves ended up here during the Eighteenth Century.

We watched kites flying on the point and chatted to the guys who had made some of them. They are made of carbon fibre and spinnaker material, since the chaps who made them follow the big yachts from Newport, Rhode Island to Antigua, to do the bright work (varnish) for them, and to make kites in their spare time. The kites can be seen flying from Newport (R.I.) as well, during the summer.

Susan reacquainted herself with the swimming pool, whilst the rest of us had our early morning swims in the sea. Stephen showed his prowess at darts and Margaret gamely washed all the clothes at the house. Stephen and Susan’s luggage turned up from St Martins and was none the worse for its excursion.

We switched modes of transport ,from the minibus, to Atlantia and on New Years Eve, sailed round to Nelson’s Dockyard in English Harbour to celebrate the coming of the New Year at the restaurant HQ, based in the old officers mess at the dockyard. We had a splendid evening with a five course gourmet meal that cost two legs and an arm. The other arm was left alone to put the battered and bruised wallet back into the pocket! The evening however was splendid, with fireworks being set off from the Governors House and streamers, hats and live jazz provided by the restaurant. Our hostess, Natasha, was wonderful, and kept us thoroughly entertained, as well as serving us beautifully. You must look her up if you get to English Harbour.

We completed the evening by first footing Ed on ‘Joy’, his catamaran, which he had brought round to English Harbour for the New Year celebrations. We had a great time on board, although some of the proceedings there are a little hazy. Will and Stephen were properly dressed in their kilts, and Margaret did take them a lump of coal as a first footer!

New Years Day was spent recovering, but we took a taxi in the evening to Shirley Heights, where there was the usual Sunday BBQ and party.

It rained some of the time, but Stephen, Susan and Sarah kept on dancing to the excellent steel band, who were playing away, under their ‘roofed in’ area. There were probably a thousand people there on the old battlements, all of them sheltering when it rained except the younger members of our family! Shirley Heights, by the way, is named after the Governor Shirley, of the Seventeenth Century, who was governor of Jamaica and the Leeward Islands. He developed Antigua as a strategic base for the Navy and Army. At one time the life expectancy of a soldier in Antigua was less than a year, due to disease rather than war.

The taxi driver on the way back from Shirley Heights gave us an unexpected tour of the harbour resorts, since he was expecting us to be staying at the Inn. When we had explained that it was the Admiral’s Inn we wanted to go to and not the Inn at the Harbour, we were taken to the right place and discharged into our dinghies to row back to Atlantia. Tired but happy.

The following day we had a bracing sail into the trade winds and about twelve miles to windward to Nonsuch Bay, on the South West coast of the island. The South coast is the only area not protected by reefs that surround Antigua, and the waves roll straight in from Africa. Fortunately our brave matelots were full of stugeron, and so the high rollers had no effect and the previous nights BBQ stayed where it should be.

Nonsuch Bay, inside Green Island is protected by reefs from the Atlantic waves. It is a beautiful calm place for swimming and the water is usually clear. We were making for our anchoring spot, when all of a sudden, a French boat in the anchorage decided he wanted to move his own boat to the spot we were making for. Since he was on our port side, he was supposed to give way to us. Eventually he did, but not with very good grace. We anchored at the same time, but fortunately his anchor dragged and he ended up some way behind us. The swimming was a little cloudy, so there was not much to see apart from some exotic fish gaily swimming around.

We anchored for the night in Clover Leaf Bay, to the North of the unfinished Emerald Bay resort. We anchored within twenty metres of the mangrove trees, which were the home to a flock of pelicans and, later at night, a swarm of fireflies. The fireflies are very pretty, sparkling away in the cool of the evening.

The next day we motor sailed through Spithead Channel, dodging two rocks and threading our way through the coral reef, to the open Atlantic beyond. The channel is about twenty yards wide and is not one we have attempted before. The large tripper catamaran coming the other way, kindly kept close by his side of the channel, as he passed us. After rather a lumpy sail, we made our way back in through the reef at horseshoe passage, Susan plotting our course on the computer, whilst Will used sightings, bearings and latitude on deck. We missed the reef nicely.

We swam off cistern point on Long Island and Stephen was attacked by an octopus, which flashed blue, white and brown before his eyes. He escaped!

We anchored that night off Great Bird Island, inside the reef, on the East side of the island. The following day, we sailed Dipper and motored the dinghy ashore to swim off the deserted island and pristine beach.

We had only been there half an hour, when the beach was crowded by a train of outboard rubber dinghies, which ‘explore’ the waters of the islands. These were followed by the ‘Antigua Adventure’ catamaran, with a further 20 snorkelers on board. Round the other side of the island further boats called in and a vendor set up a stall selling bright shirts and skirts. Suddenly our deserted island was not deserted any more! We did however learn about the most endangered snake in the world, which inhabits the island. It is the Antigua Racer of which 153 are the sole island survivors. The mongoose, which was introduced to the main island to kill snakes did a pretty good job there, but fortunately has not reached Great Bird Island. 500 pairs of long tailed tropicbirds also nest on the island and we saw them wheeling round the low cliffs, out across the crashing waves.

We departed from the deserted(?!) North East of Antigua to round the North coast, past the airport, with it’s huge radar dish, and past the oil terminal, set well off the coast, but in fairly shallow water. Past the capital, St Johns, where the enormous cruise liners dwarf every building in the ‘city’.

Past the beach resorts, which send out the hobie cats with their brightly coloured sails. Back to Jolly Harbour, where there was still a day left to catch breath before Alison, Andy and Sarah were to fly out. We decided to have a picnic on a desert island that day. A true desert island this time, since the beach was so small we could only fit the dinghies and ourselves on the island between the rocks.

We swam round the island and saw lobsters and a barracuda as well as sergeant majors and fairy basselets. We had our picnic in a shower of rain. Just like Scotland! The intrepid explorers ( the younger members) explored the briar patch that is the centre of the island, with it’s prickly pear cacti and it’s thorn trees. They weren’t too punctured on their return. The volcanic origins of the island are clear to see, with solidified mudflows and ‘bombs’ littered within it, and its rusty iron colour. Montserrat of course is only twenty miles away and we can see the ash clouds spuming from the top.

The beach on the desert island has since moved round the island. Apparently the beach is in continuous rotation on the island and our picnic place will probably never come back again in the same way.

Since the family left, the weather has been fairly poor. It seems to rain a lot more and presently the wind is blowing hard as well. We are still based in Jolly Harbour but will probably move to Falmouth next week to effect some repairs and maybe to change the staysail into a rolling staysail. The rubber dinghy leaks water through the floor, and we may replace the floor depending on cost.

Harry and Hilary passed through, helping Paul and Nancy on ‘Encore’, on the first leg of their circumnavigation, through the Panama Canal. Nick and Marwyn Wright were here on holiday and came to dinner on Atlantia. Our friends from Rhode Island, Chip and Helen on ‘Tangent Girl’ have now reached Antigua and are on the next mooring to us.

In Scotland, property matters seem to follow the pattern of two steps forward and one back. In Antigua, it is four steps backwards and one step forwards! Perhaps this will continue. We shall see, and let you know next time, whether we have a house here or not. We hope the weather will improve as well!

Love Atlantia