Falmouth Harbour, Antigua
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Mon 14 Jan 2008 20:21
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17:00.648N 61:46.670W
We sailed the short 15 miles from Deep Bay to
Falmouth Harbour last Sunday (1/6), and stayed two nights there.
Falmouth Harbour is within easy walking distance from English Harbour, and
the two together make up the yachting capital of Antigua (a picture of both
harbors taken from above was included in the 'Antigua Island Tour' blog
entry). The number and variety of sailboats and mega motor yachts is the
most we've seen in one place in the Caribbean so far. Unlike the
Virgin Islands, there are very few charter boats around Antigua, so just
about all of the boats you see in the pictures are 'cruisers' like us.
Well, maybe not totally like us since many of the really large boats have a
professional crew on board to take care of all those menial tasks like cooking
and cleaning and piloting the yacht (takes all the fun out of
owning a boat, don't you think?). Not only
are there a wide variety of boats in English and Falmouth Harbours, but they are
from all over the world as well. US boats are in the minority as many
of the boats are from Europe, or from various Caribbean islands including that
famous tax haven, the Cayman Islands. Although Antigua is an independent
country, it is still very 'English', and there are quite a few British
boats here (picture 1).
We anchored a fair distance out in the harbour, not
too far from the channel, so we had a good view of the mega yachts as they made
their way through the channel to the marinas. It was like watching a giant
boat parade that went on for days. Shown in picture 2 is the
Maltese Falcon parading through the channel. This boat is 100 something
feet long and all of its sails are controlled automatically via electronics - an
extremely modern design. We've read about this boat in one of the sailing
magazines, so it was fun to see it in person. There was an old
square-rigger named 'Tenacious' in the marina, and it just so happened that the
modern Maltese Falcon ended up docked right next to it (picture 3 - old next to
new, spanning the sailing ages).
To clear out of Antigua, we walked from Falmouth
Harbor to the customs and immigration office in English
Harbour. Along the way, we passed by many a restaurant, but none as
intriguing as Abracadabra (picture 4). Where else could you
find Italian and Mediterranean food, a disco and a 'chill out' garden
all wrapped up into one place? As Don and I like to say when we've seen or
experienced something that strikes us as odd, 'Only in the
Caribbean....'.
Anne
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