Havachat Adventures: ILe de Saints and Antigua

13^th to 16^th January – Ile de Saints

Off we go again! A quick sail of a few hours to Ile de Saints. We could not believe the difference to Dominica! Just about 20 nautical miles from Dominica, a complete different picture! Much flatter island group, (the Caribbean has two types of islands: the younger ones, which are mountainous and very lush with still active volcanos and the older ones, which already have flattened down and have in form of vegetation more bushland) with different vegetation and instead of the not very developed Dominica, a French little town. You could have been somewhere in France! It is just incredible just how different these islands are! Ile de Saints belongs to France like Martinique and Guadeloupe. As I said, pretty little town (Terre-De-Haut) with lovely shops... we anchored on the neighbour island of Grand Ilet with just about another 3 to 4 boats and the snorkelling there was just fantastic. It was like swimming in an aquarium! So many different fish! Kate and I went island exploring (which is only inhabited by the island caretaker and lots of goats and lizards), which has old ruins at the top. Apparently the French and English fought over this island a bit.

Havachat at the anchorage at Grand Ilet

Exploring Grand Ilet

So cute!

Havachat at anchor and next to us Swell with a lovely french couple, Christian and Roseline

The ruins on top of the island

Sand and water....

17th to 27th January - Antigua
Early start! Pete and I lifted anchor at about 2:30 in the morning, as we had a long sail ahead of us to get to Antigua. We always try to arrive in daylight! Makes it much easier. We had a wonderful sail with steady winds all along Guadeloupe, but same again: once we were between the island the strong gusty winds started again!! The last 5 hours of our trip weren’t that fabulous!! Punching through the waves with winds gusting again up to 50 knots.

A bit of fishing on the way... Ben got a Barracuda

But of course we made it and decided to take the luxury and go into a Marina for a change (we had not been in a marina since we left St Lucia) at the south of the island at Falmouth. We also had arranged to meet up there with Pete and Judy from Aurora (Lovely Newcastle people we met in St Lucia and who became very good friends of ours!). We even managed to go out for a beer and a bite to eat with them that night. We had a great time meeting up with Pete and Judy over the next couple of weeks over some sundowners or dinner. It was strange being in a marina again and as we were located right at the start of the Marina, everybody walked past our boat and talked to us (it is amazing how many Aussies are on the go!), so much so, that we got nothing done (we used the time there to give the boat a big clean, which was really necessary!) and decided it was time again to go on an anchorage. Now this island is firmly in English and American hands. Down in the south, at Falmouth is also English Harbour, which really looks like and old English settlement! After we left the Marina we sailed to the west coast of the island to anchor in Jolly Harbour, which is firmly in American hands, where they have holiday houses with jettys for their boats out the front or back of their houses. We anchored around the headland of theJolly harbour alongside of a long beach. The water colour was incredible, a very light turquoise, which almost looked like it was glowing!

Sunset at Jolly Harbour

The next day Lisa, Kate, Pete and I set out on an adventure to try and book a flight for Kate back to Miami. We had to locate a travel agent as we tried very frustrated with the internet in a cafe to upload flights and accommodation in Miami... But of course the travel agent was in St Johns, the capital of Antigua. We caught the bus to the city centre, to the market place (it was Saturday, so there was life and hectic everywhere with the fruit, vegie and clothes stands). This was the real Antigua with the locals, away from the tourist areas! On the big bus station we had to find our way around to get another bus to the area where the travel agency was. Got there fine, all good, a big worry out of our way, Kate was organised. And all the way back... waiting for busses... lots of fun. And at Jolly Harbour they have actually a decent supermarket with lots of nice things! Steaks! I don’t know when we last saw them in the shops. Meat is not easy to get here in the Caribbean we find, as there is just no grazing areas. So if there is meat, it is mainly imported from the US. Sometimes we weren’t even able to get some minced meat. Nice dinner that night.

More sun sets...

Judy and Pete from Aurora off to their next destination!

From Jolly Harbour we went north to Deep Bay, a lovely little anchorage with only a few boats anchored and a long sandy beach and a wreck to dive on. Ben and Kate went for a dive on the wreck of the Andes, while us others snorkelled around it and the surrounding reefs. On land there was just an empty beach and a hill with ruins to climb. (Antigua has plenty of beaches, actually 365 of them, one for each day of the year, as they advertise it!)

Jack getting ready to go under water exploring!

Kate and Ben on their way to the dive side

Kate above the wreck

The Andes Wreck

Lisa and her passion - glasses!

Havachat at Deep Bay anchorage

Deep Bay

Exploring the ruins

And then through the night it started.... Pete was being sick all night, by 4 in the morning Kate is coming, with the same complaints, sick, splitting headache and when I measured their temperature, it was over 39 degrees! They both were so sick, it was frightening! We thought they might have food poisoning, but as Kate is vegetarian, she had completely different foods all day than Pete! We decided they needed a doctor and we managed to sail around the corner to the harbour of St Johns, where Ben dropped Kate, Pete and me off to go to a doctor. He was a lovely helpful man and said they had a very bad case of gastro and to treat the symptoms, but he also send Pete to get blood and stool tests done. Kate thankfully started improving on the next day (we were sooo worried, that she would be too sick to fly!), but Pete was just still very sick and weak. I have never seen him like that. We had to sail around the top of Antigua the next day to get to Maiden Island an uninhabited little island off Antigua, opposite the airport so we could drop Kate off. Slowly Pete got better, but it was taking him a while.

Kate left us on the 22^nd!!! How sad!!! We miss her terribly. But I think, even though she had a great time with us, she was looking forward to going home especially as she was going home to Big Day Out the next day!!! She managed well, to check herself in to all the flights, in the hotel in Miami. But it ended with the airline losing her luggage in Sydney, which she didn’t get until the next day.

Last meal with Kate at the Airport!!!! So sad!

The tests came back, Pete and Kate had Shigella bacteria, which is a very rare bacteria you get through food contamination Dr Fuller told us. He wanted to see Pete again. So off we went again. We left the dinghy at Shell Beach and started walking to catch a bus into town. But a nice lady gave us a lift! People are so nice everywhere. (As we were a bit early, we had a drink in a cafe at the harbour. St Johns harbour is a major cruise ship harbour, with up to 6 cruise ships being able to stay in the harbour! The amount of tourists there is enormous!) Dr Fuller told us the time to get sick with this is 7 days, so it could have been anything they had! We had a nice chat with Dr Fuller about boating and when we left, he not just didn’t charge us for this visit, but also gave Pete the keys to his car to get a book out of there he gave to us. A beautiful big colour book about wrecks and salvaging boats around Antigua, written by Dr Fuller. Antigua is surrounded by reefs and a lot of boats go down. Dr Fuller has been involved in a lot of recovery of these boats.

Maiden Island was very much loved by the children. A lonely island to explore, with lots of hermit crabs, big beautiful conch shells to collect (very much to the dismay of Pete!) and great snorkelling.

Some of Ben's great under water photos

Maiden Island was meant to have a resort on it, which was never built, only an old wooden wharf is there. The few nights we were there, we met each afternoon there on the wharf with drinks and nibblies for sundowners to watch the sunset with Pete and Judy, who also where anchored at Maiden island. These were lovely peaceful days, just to be even more wonderful when we went around the corner of Maiden Island to Bird Island.

Bird Island

Picnic on 'our' lonely island

This island was even more beautiful and we had a ball. Snorkelling, picnic on a lonely island, exploring and playing in the sand (it makes no difference what age they are, give them sand and water and they are happy, nothing has changed since they were 3 years old!)...

...after that, back to Jolly harbour, as we had to check out of the country from there. We spend another nice couple of days there at the same anchorage again, catching back up with Pete and July and also John (Pete’s brother) and Trish, who swapped Aurora with Pete and Judy who had to go back to Australia and we are very much looking forward to catch up in the next couple of months with John and Trish. Also in the same bay were Steve and Angela from Pannikin, also Australians from Coffs Harbour! All such lovely people. We had a great Australia day with them, ending in a nice dinner.