Antigua
Moxie - Beck Family Adventure
Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck
Fri 24 Jan 2014 12:24
Arrived into the very crowded English Harbour, Antigua and were surprised to see Silhouette and Sudoetse here too. A great start in a new country, within 15 minutes of arrival the girls were running on in the sand with their friends.
We have a few things to sort out, cooking gas is almost completely out and I'd rather not buy new bottles (again) so hope to get one Spanish and one Portuguese bottle filled. Diesel, far too expensive in the French islands so hopefully cheap here because we are very empty indeed. AIS - it died, raymarine do a fixed price repair so maybe we can get that sorted here. Batteries, 4 new Trojan professional 180amp hour batteries, less than 12 months old and dead, they will be in warranty if we go back to Portugal, but we are not. Mastervolt BTM Amp hour counter, giving nonsense readings, also fixed price repair option. Medical insurance, better get some since we intend heading stateside, actually it's already arranged I just need some Internet! Internet here is very expensive!
Clearing in to Antigua is interesting, 4 different people in separate offices to see, one hour and 70USD in fees later we are done. It gets much harder than this, America! Don't get me started, I think the saying goes 'guilty until proven American' or as Superman should have said 'Truth, justice and anything we say'. There will no doubt be much more to say on this, but basically we will have to go to the Dominican Republic and be interviewed to get a visa.
OK, so the other guys are heading off to Barbuda, (same country different island) so we will follow and come back to Antigua.
Fuel, the Beneteau guys (s&s) left at 7am but we needed diesel so we only got away at 9:00. Fuel was cheapish, 15EC dollars per gallon (4.25 litres), there's an exchange of around 2.60EC to the USD and back into pounds I guess it is about 90p per litre. But then he adds 3% credit card fee so there wastes 50EC, then his machine puts the transaction through in USD but because I gave him the general (for world currencies) rather than USD specific travel card it causes me another 1.5 % fee. End result is that using my card to pay for fuel cost me 30USD, withdrawing from an ATM (which unfortunately was miles away) is free! Moral, cash is king - banks will steal your money anyway they can. Looking on the barely illuminated side though I still saved loads versus buying in Guadeloupe.
Currently in Barbuda. 23 jan 2013