Arrival at Barbuda

Stargazer of Southampton
Susie and Adam (both think they are skipper)
Thu 22 Mar 2012 23:43


> 22:03:12, 17:37.73N 61:51.13W
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> Arrived at Barbuda and are now anchored off '11 mile beach' - which is 11 miles of white sand beach with one hotel small at one end and a bar in the middle (which is shut), nothing else, the main town is two miles away from us over a saltwater lagoon which sits just the other side of the beach and the palm trees

Barbuda is a change from Monserrat in that it is absolutely flat, you can only actually see it from a couple of miles away and all you see then is palm trees sticking out of a very thin strip of sand. It has LOTS of shipwrecks because the reefs extend miles out (you can hit the reefs before you even see the island) - luckily for us we have GPS which makes life easier, even so - the depth was just 7 metres when we were a mile and a half away from the beach so I was on 'coral watch' duty looking out for Coral Heads (it's been a while since it was surveyed around here). We arrived by 1pm specifically so the sun would be high and we could see shallow patches - shouldn't have bothered as a squall came over, it all went dark and we couldn't see much at all. We have anchored a couple of hundred metres off the beach, there are about 10 yachts occupying the 11 miles so it's pretty peaceful. The wind is still very light which meant we could come here - it's not really a place to be in strong winds.

Going to try and manhandle our tender over the beach tomorrow and into the lagoon so we can go across to Codrington which is the only 'town' (village?) on the island. Monserrat had about 4000 inhabitants, I think Barbuda has less even though it is about the same size in area as Antigua.
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