English Harbor is one of the major points of entry for yachts in Antigua.  This year is was one of only two and the other one – St. Johns – is the major commercial port.

The rules were that you were supposed to call on VHF radio the Antigua Port Authority 6 hours before showing up, and the rules were very adamant that you not show up unannounced.  Now, we spent the night before at Barbuda, which is about 6 hours away, so I started calling right away.  I can’t remember if we ever contacted the Antigua Port Authority.  We tried every 30 minutes or so for 6 hours, but I don’t think we ever got through.  That’s typical of the Caribbean.

You were also supposed to have a valid PCR test before showing up.  Our result still hadn’t been emailed to us (come to find out it finally arrived 6 months later – yes, that is not a typo).  Oh, and even with a negative PCR test, the rules said you had to quarantine on your boat for 14 days.  We had specifically stocked the boat with food for 14 days and projects that would keep us busy.

We anchor in the required quarantine bay in English Harbor.  As you can see from the tall masts at the marina in English Harbor, we are anchored in the outer harbor.  It was very crowded there with boat pretty close to each other (you can see the other cat right off our stern in the pic).  That always makes me nervous.  (The one good thing about the close boats is that the cat in the shot had a man, woman and child where the woman did a lot of topless sunbathing.  And she was quite attractive, so I guess I could put up with the nervousness.)

Within 24 hours of our arrival, the health inspector shows up at our boat.  Again, we didn’t have a PCR test, were required to quarantine for 14 days, and hadn’t announced our arrival 6 hours in advance as requested. 

After about 15 minutes of talking with the health inspector, he said we were good to go.  I was very confused, so asked if that meant we could free to go ashore and around the island.  He said yes.  I didn’t push it.  So, after all of the rules, we were let go on the island.  Again, as we found out, not unusual for the Caribbean.