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.

On our trip from St. Barths to Antigua, we decided to stop and stay the night in Barbuda just so we could shorten the daily sailing time. 

Barbuda is a flat island, with not a lot of inhabitants, and a lot of nice sand beaches.  We anchored here when we had chartered previously so we knew a little about the island.

We weren’t going ashore, so we didn’t need to check in with immigration.  I had purposely not registered with Barbuda, nor told anyone that we were going to be there.  If we wanted to check in, we would have had to had a PCR test and quarantine for 14 days, because Barbuda is officially part of Antigua, with the same rules.  So we just anchored, had some dinner, and got ready for bed.

About an hour after we anchored, I heard my cell phone ringing.  I looked at the number and recognized the area code as that of Antigua/Barbuda.  I thought this was very weird because, while I had pre-registered to enter Antigua, I hadn’t said anything to Barbuda and didn’t understand who would be calling from Antigua.

When I answered the phone, the voice on the other end identified themselves as being from the Port Authority of Barbuda.  The guy said they saw our boat on AIS (like GPS), found our phone number on the Antigua registration, and wanted to know what our intentions were.  Seemed nice enough, just doing his job, so I said that we were on our way to Antigua and were just spending the night.  He double-checked that we weren’t planning on going ashore – I confirmed that we weren’t – he said to have a good night and hung up.  I just thought this was interesting that we were being watched and they were trying to do the best they could to enforce their COVID rules.

We stood on the dock in Gustavia, St. Barth’s and watched this guy back his super-yacht between two other super-yachts roughly the same size. The deck-hands were all running around with the big black fenders making sure he didn’t run into either of the parked yachts. Very funny. Many deck-hands on walkie-talkies to someone driving. Many starts and stops. We saw the captain of the super-yacht later in the government office where you check-in and he was cracking jokes with the officials. Seemed like a pretty nice guy.

This harbor is on the northwest end of St. Barth’s and is part of the natural marine reserve. The only dwelling is the old abandoned home of David Rockefeller on the peninsula on the south side. If you’re staying in close to the beach, you have to pick up a mooring ball so you don’t disturb the seabed. St. Barth’s is trying to get the sea grass to regrow on the seabed so that turtles will readily make the harbor a stop on their feeding tour. You can anchor out in deeper water if you want or if you are a superyacht.

We stayed here several years ago when we chartered out of St. Martin. This time it was much more crowded with several superyachts and some people staying up until 5 AM playing music loudly from their moored boats. Quite annoying.

Anyway, after those rude people left, it is a nice place. Good snorkeling, daily turtle sightings off the back of the boat, and a nice little hiking trail to the top of the bluff if you’re so inclined.

You can also take the dinghy the mile-plus drive down the coast into Gustavia to check in at immigration, get supplies, and pretend that you’re hanging out with the rich and famous. The dinghy ride down the coast can get pretty rough at times and there is one pass that is quite shallow and wavy, so make sure you hold onto your groceries.

Another shot from the top of the bluff shooting north west.  Our boat is down there somewhere.

Most of the superyachts park in the outer harbor and dinghy in (their “dinghys” are staffed by 2-3 uniformed youths, 25-30 feet long, have individual branded umbrellas for each seat, and are usually powered by twin 200 hp engines – a long way from our 10 foot, 15 hp dinghy).

This shot really doesn’t do the outer harbor justice. There are additional boats out of the shot to both the left and right, with a total of probably 25-35 total superyachts at the height of the season.

In this shot, I believe the boat the farthest out on the left-hand side is the “Christina O”. This was Aristotle Onassis’ old boat when he was married to Jacqueline Onassis (Kennedy). Winston Churchill also liked hanging out on the boat.

Our boat is not in there.

Books say it is privately owned, but I don’t think it has any real dwellings.  Next time, it might be nice to dinghy ashore and hike a bit.

A small island that makes a nice lunch stop when traveling from St. Martin to St. Barth’s.  We did just that.