Deep Bay, Antigua

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Wed 8 Jan 2014 17:26

17:04.5N 61:53.6W

 

 

Sat, Sun, Mon & Tues – 4th, 5th,  6th  & 7th Jan

 

Saturday was spent quietly enjoying the good free wifi signal coming out of the resort in Hermitage bay which is where we had anchored within the area known at Five Islands Harbour.

 

We were anchored in a good spot close to the beach but the wind was blowing hard and the long fetch up the full length of Five Islands did make it all a bit bumpy, but nothing too dramatic.  We were joined during the day by a few other yachts also seeking some shelter from the strong North Easterly wind and as ever we were subjected to frequent squalls which delivered torrential rain, albeit in very short bursts.

 

Sarah ‘borrowed’ Larry, Ruffian’s soft toy Llama and sat down and did a wonderful drawing of Larry posing in a very idiosyncratic way!  That evening we invited Iain and Fiona to a grand unveiling of their commission and they were thrilled with the outcome.

 

On Sunday we decided that we would make a move and see what Deep Bay was like, but firstly we had some urgent shopping to do, so we set off in the morning for Jolly Harbour, just a few miles to the south and we anchored outside the harbour in a sheltered spot just out of the channel leading into the harbour itself. Actually this was a nice place to be anchored and it had free wifi and was very flat, unfortunately this is where the new ‘Party Boat’ that has appeared this year is anchored and the thought of being close to this aberration as it pumped out dance music through till 0700 hours in the morning was well beyond anything we needed to put up with.

 

We launched the dinghy and rode into the harbour and tied up at the dinghy dock, but we did stop and chat briefly with Michael on ‘Transcendence’ from Cork who we saw was flying an OCC burgee. We got pretty much all we needed from the Epicurean grocery store and headed back out to Serafina.

 

From there we headed back past Five Islands and made our way into Deep Bay which is a bit of a misnomer since it is actually very shallow.  Ruffian was sat in a nice spot very close to the beach but sadly there was not really enough room for us there as well, so we had to do with anchoring a little way behind them. The bonus being that we seemed to be getting better wifi although we did have to suffer a little more swell.

 

There was however a further complication to the day in that Paul and Sue Beak, very long standing friends of ours from the UK had arrived on Saturday for a week in an apartment in Nonsuch Bay.  We had said that we would try to come round to see them once the weather had abated a bit.  But Paul is far too energised to sit and wait for that to happen, so they had hired a car and were on their way to find us in Hermitage Bay which is where we had been the previous day. Of course we had moved, but we were able to communicate that to them eventually and they did a remarkable job to find their way down a very unlikely track ending up close the beach at Deep Bay. It seems that they had met and chatted to half the island in their quest for directions to this remote spot.

 

So we picked them up from the beach in the dinghy and they had supper on board and as the time had slipped away, they just stayed the night.

 

By Monday morning a plan had been hatched that saw Paul and Sue generously driving all 6 of us (in a tiny 4 seat hire car) to St John’s, the capital of Antigua so that we could visit the market and get a few other essentials. Then they kindly drove us back which was a real bonus once we had seen for ourselves how far we would have had to walk as was the original plan!

 

Iain & Fiona had also bought a picture frame and they used it to mount the picture of Larry which now has pride of place in Ruffian’s saloon.

 

Tuesday was a really beautiful day and reminded us all of why we had come here in the first place. Glorious unbroken sunshine and so after a few chores in the morning we all four set off to walk up the Fort Barrington which is a derelict former lookout post towering over Deep Bay.