This is just south of Jolly Harbor on the west coast of Antigua. Many books tell you not to come in here because there are too many shallow areas and moving sandbars. Also, apparently you get large breaking waves on the shallows when there are swells coming in. But, our Canadian friends at the marina said this was their favorite anchorage and that they knew it so well they could come in after dark.

With a little trepidation, we though we would venture in because we needed a place to stay for a couple of days and didn’t feel like going to any of the other anchorages. It was very sparsely populated with boats, probably due to all the warnings and that it is just too shallow for monohulls with their deeper keels. But there weren’t many coral heads, it was mostly a sand bottom, and I like places that aren’t crowded. I don’t remember the exact depth, but it was probably around 7 feet (2 feet under the keel), barely clear enough that you could see bottom, so it was slow going into the anchorage. Our friends insisted that it was 8 feet all the way to the beach, so they would anchor close enough to the beach that they could easily swim in. I wasn’t that brave, so I found a place a little further out and put down the anchor.

I think we stayed here 2 nights and generally had a good stay. Beautiful empty beach, some resorts further to the south on the bluff, a “high-end tenting on the beach” thing going on a little to the north, and nice water. All-in-all a good anchorage for us. I’m sure we’ll stay here again.

And, by the way, while I found it labelled on Google maps after the fact, it didn’t show up as Valley Church beach in our sailing guide maps, so I wasn’t even sure where it was when we first looking. I knew where Valley Church was because we had walked past Valley Church on the road. I also knew there was a beach down the road from Valley Church because, again, we walked to it (from the road). But the books didn’t identify the beach and were pretty clear about the dangers involved in anchoring.