We Turn Back for This Beach (Antigua) | Ep. 64

hello so we are in Di'i this morning in Guadalupe which is on the northern point of the northern coast and we are going to shoot off to Antigua later so we're gonna say bye to my friend Ali and yeah we're gonna have a nice nine-hour sail across to Antigua so we just had a dip gonna have a coffee and a bit of breakfast before we head off. We got on our way and headed north to Antigua. It was about 45 nautical miles and we had a beautiful beam reach sail all the way up to Jodi Harbour. We made pretty good time in the end averaging over six knots. As we were going to a new country we had to take down the French flag and hoist the Antiguan courtesy flag followed by the yellow quarantine flag to show that we hadn't cleared into the country yet. It's really shallow where we are right now we're just coming up the coastline of Antigua as we make our way into Jodi Harbour and this part is super shallow it's like under 10 meters but we're still pretty far off the coast it's really weird so we saw it come down to like four or five meters. We're still this far away from land. Earth smell from the island. Hello Antigua! Hey Cora we hear you. How's it going? Our buddies just came over to escort us into the anchorage. It was just super cute. We made our way into an anchorage just off Jodi Harbour and caught up with our friends Foo and Ria of Kourou that night who we hadn't seen since the day we left Cape Verde together for our Atlantic crossing. We stayed in touch with them via the satellite phone throughout the whole 17-day passage and they were only over about 16 nautical miles away from us out there but we were excited to catch up in person and hear all about how their passage went. The next morning we headed into the harbour itself to go and check into the country. Jodi Harbour has a Venice-like feel to it. The harbour has loads of waterways and all the houses have their own private jetties or boat storage areas basically like a private garage for your car except for your boat. We said goodbye to our friends again who were heading further north and we went to land that evening to soak up the full Caribbean vibes. Antigua is so pristine. It's home to hundreds of bays which makes it such a great spot for sailing. We've been really stupid. We left the bay, Carlisle Bay to head to English Harbour. It's only like a four mile sail but there's so much wind today and we just I think naively thought we could just motor our way through the waves but it's just so strong and we didn't lift the dinghy up. Rookie. Rookie I know but we're just a bit lazy. Well it wasn't even that we just didn't really I think we just underestimated how bad it was gonna be out here and yeah I'm just keeping an eye on the dinghy whilst Lars is trying to motor sail us as close to the wind as possible. We're heading straight into the swell and the wind. Whoa. So we're trying to like tack motor sail our way up to English Harbour and it's not going great. It's a bit of a tense ride. Yeah basically a bit worried about the dinghy more than anything hoping it survives the trip. We've not, I think we're probably only about halfway and we've been going for about 45 minutes and it's not supposed to take that long. But yeah don't get lazy. This is like a lesson that sometimes we just get too comfortable in our sailing and we always assume that everything's gonna be okay but then I don't know you just kind of forget that it can be pretty wild out there and when it's wild that it's impossible to, like it's too late for us to now fill up the dinghy. Sorry little dinghy. It looks quite nice sailing on the camera. When we arrived in the anchorage we were greeted by a school. Luckily we're used to these by now and so we don't get caught out as much. When the weather cleared up we hiked up the hill overlooking the bay to a place called Shirley Heights. Every Sunday there's a big get-together here with drinks, a barbecue and steel drums and you can boo you until the sun goes down whilst overlooking the incredible bays of English Harbour and Falmouth Harbour. We're walking back from the party. It's pretty late, it's pretty dark. Luckily we've got a head torch with us. That's fine actually, it's totally fine. It's on this like hiking trail. Oh maybe I should put the flash on. There you go. That's better. You can still hear the music though. Yeah yeah, Shirley Heights up there. And this is what we're walking on right now. Lead the way love. So today we are in Falmouth Harbour in Antigua and we are about to set sail to Green Island. So we've been waiting for a couple of days because the wind's been really strong and it's an upwind sail so we're gonna be beating into the wind which isn't gonna be that fun or maybe it will be fun. We're just getting everything tidy and ship shape because it can obviously go flying whenever we're heeling and so yeah just trying to get the boat ready to go and then we're gonna leave soon. Really excited about going there because so far we haven't been able to swim in Antigua. It's strange, the water's really clear and beautiful. It's exactly what you'd expect like Caribbean islands to be right with the turquoise water and white sandy beaches but the the sand is so fine I think or for some reason it's kind of like lime scaly and so white that it creates like a powder in the water. So visibility so far for us has been really bad and we're hoping that when we get around to the eastern side it's a bit better visibility so that we can do some swimming and underwater diving again. It was pretty windy and whilst we were enjoying the sail at the beginning we started to feel seasick and were struggling to make any grounds. Stuff was flying everywhere despite us trying to get ship shape before leaving. Tacking into the wind is never fun but this trip felt especially slow so instead of continuing and not enjoying it we changed our plans. Yeah it's pretty bad we've been struggling our way tacking up wind and it's where we realized it was going to take us all day to get up to Green Island. It's really about four o'clock in the afternoon so we don't really have all day. It'd just be dark and things we don't really feel like sailing up wind. It was just super uncomfortable I was feeling seasick. So we've got a new plan which is the plus side to cruising and being flexible. We've turned back on ourselves and we're pretty much where we started in about 10 minutes it took us. Whereas it took us probably about an hour and a half to get to where we'd got to. But we're gonna continue round back over to Jolly Harbour which is on the western coast and then from there we're gonna go up to Barbuda first and then we'll come down via Green Island. Kind of relieved. I've never seen you so frustrated. So frustrated. It's like come on we can't get, it's not even that far it's like 10 miles away. It looks really far when you see how much we did on a map. It's gonna take us until tomorrow basically. We're going back to Jolly Harbour. Oh no sorry yeah that's what it's called. Yeah Jolly Harbour. I much prefer downwind sailing. You can make hummus underway. This is more like it. Same reach, flat seas, 20 knots. Or no, 16 knots. It's perfect. More like 20 now. We decided to go past Jolly Harbour in the end to try out this small anchorage that we'd seen on the charts and it turned out to be idyllic. So we've just taken the dinghy ashore this morning to come and do some yoga and actually spend a bit of a morning on the beach which we don't usually do. So we brought some coffee and some notebooks and yeah just stuff to spend the morning here and enjoy this place. It's pretty remote, pretty secluded. Apparently the only way you can get here is by boat so we're only gonna share it with a couple of boats that are in the anchorage and nobody else is on the beach right now which feels pretty cool. But man it is a lot of effort to get ashore. It's beautiful once you get here and idyllic and all the rest of it but what we don't see when we're filming is launching the dinghy, getting the outboard on, packing the bags, getting things in, pulling the dinghy out of the beach. I shouldn't be complaining but it is more effort than one would imagine. Yeah it took us an hour to get here. Just about to head to the beach to go for our first beach barbecue but we don't have that much sunlight left so we need to make a move. So we got the pit that somebody else already dug for us. Sweet. Can you feed it as much as me? So I know this looks really idyllic and picturesque but just so you know we are getting completely binned to death by these tiny little midges. They're like tiny. I'm not even sure if I can pick it up on camera. Trying to find them and they just keep biting us everywhere so yeah if you're a little envious right now just tell yourself that. That doesn't look good. Just wrapped up my guitar so that it doesn't get rained on. You proud? It's been a while. Yeah you did a really good job. This looks great. There's something really... I think the man inside me yes man make fire. We basically spent the whole day at the beach today. We came here this morning at like eight. So we went back to the boat grabbed some food at like one or two and then came back out again basically for round two. Whenever I'm alone with you, you make me feel like I am whole again. Whenever I'm alone with you, you make me feel like I am young again. Whenever I'm alone with you, you make me feel like I am fine. This felt like one of those evenings where everything comes together perfectly, making all the effort worthwhile. We had the whole beach to ourselves, we were lucky with the rain and thankfully the bugs disappeared once the fire was lit and the moon was out. How good is this? So successful man these are so tasty. I mean I can't believe we waited months to eat these. Well we've been waiting for the campfire right? Yeah I know worth it huh? They couldn't have tasted this good anywhere else. Oh man. Oh yeah. Worth the wait. Look at that little baby. I gotta say it's blackened to perfection. Amazing you did so well on the seasoning as well. I mean shit tons of olive oil, salt and pepper. I was worried that they weren't going to be nice without butter. Yeah no butter right? It actually works. They're really good. I mean barbecued banana. Fired chocolate banana. Thank you for watching this far and a massive thank you to all our lovely patrons for supporting us in making these videos. If you'd like to help us out then give us a like and subscribe to our channel if you're new here. Join us next time as we sail up to Barbuda which turns out to be a real-life paradise island and we enjoy being off-grid for a couple of days. See you there!