Antigua to Tortola | 1-way charter

Antigua to Tortola, BVI | A One-Way Charter

I "won" this charter on the Sailonline auction and sailed from Antigua to Tortola, May 8-18 2004. The boat was a 43' monohull (and reconfirmed to me how much I prefer a cat for cruising!)

After landing on Antigua we found ourselves standing in the customs line right next to Barry and Jackie, who had also won a charter on the auction. We ended up running in to them on various islands and had a great time with them. We all taxied to the Epicurean for provisioning (found nothing on Antigua equivalent to Bobby's) and then on to English Harbor.

The boats, Barry's and mine, were not ready so we hung out around English Harbor until late afternoon. A member of my crew, Eve, had run a charter boat in the islands years ago and knew several people still on Antigua. We ended up having cocktails at the lovely home of Jol Byerly and Judy. He is a local character, having had the Lord Jim charter boat, now has Lord Jim's Locker and broadcasts the 09:00 "news" each day. The next morning, on the "news", he broadcast a warm welcome to us and a bon voyage.

The first night out...

...was in Nonesuch Bay, next to Green Island. This was mentioned to us by several people as a secluded spot only the locals know about. I guess they had told that little story to a whole lot of other people - but it is a pretty anchorage. We had one of those last-minute changes in plan and, instead of going west to Nevis, we went north to Barbuda.

Barry and Jackie did go to Nevis. They were asked to leave the Four Seasons as they were not staying there! They also had a very rough upwind leg to St. Barth.

After reading the Cruising Guide we went to Low Bay, with the thought of dragging the dingy over the "sand spit" to go into Codrington. However, after swimming in and inspecting the "sand spit", the beach rose steeply about 7', the spit was at least 60 yards across and the surf in the lagoon was beating against the other side - way too much effort for the possibility a restaurant would be open in Codrington.The beach at Low Bay is one of the prettiest you will see. Miles of unspoiled sand.

We then had a 10 hour passage to St. Barth.

Anchored on the north side of the channel, just outside the commercial dock. We took a taxi-tour of the island and it is far-and-away the prettiest we have visited. A trans-Atlantic race from France of over 30 one-design boats was finishing while we were there. The boats were 32' long with a 2 person crew. The winner did it in 20 days and 20 hours - all of which reminded me how old I am!We had dinner at Maya's - highly recommended (left our dingy on the north side of the commercial dock and walked the beach to Maya's).

The short sail from St. Barth to St. Martin had the highlight of seeing the new Queen Mary 2 anchored off Phillipsburg. We dropped sail and powered around her. The circum-navigation took about 15 minutes! We used the Marina Fort St. Louis in Marigot and found it very nice. Did some wash, showers, internet, etc. Some sort of get-together for liveaboards was happening in the marina and got to see some very interesting rigs. During our "taxi-tour" of the island we went through Phillipsburg - it is built for cruise ship passengers, not recommended. We had two dinners onshore, one at a street-side cafe and the other at Mini Court - no other customers but good food.

We departed St. Martin 04:40...

...across the Anegada Passage. Started under full main and genoa. A few hours after sunrise we took a double reef in the main, about an hour later dropped the main and about noon took several wraps in the genny. The partial genny carried us along over 6 kts and felt better in the 25 + kts wind (although the boat had NO wind instruments!) and 12-15 foot seas coming under our stern quarter. We had lashed the dingy upside-down on the deck, in front of the mast, for this passage and that worked very well. It probably would have flipped over had we been pulling it.

We arrived in the North Sound of Virgin Gorda with plenty of daylight and, after rejecting a mooring at Leverick as way too bouncy, settled in off BEYC. Next day we stopped for some snorkeling and ended in JVD. Again found Barry and Jackie and had a great time and meal at Corsair's. Vinnie and his crew do a great job at Corsair's. We even went back for breakfast. Then on to Norman and a mooring in the Bight. We took the dingy out to the Caves and, after dinner onboard (using up everything left in the locker), on to Willy T. Much "jumping" from the roof and placing of temporary tattoos on otherwise private regions - I, of course, was mortified by all this!

Customs questions

I cleared in and out of each port, with very little effort (BTW, before leaving home I bought courtesy flags for every island we might visit, then could not find them in our luggage. On returning home there they were sitting on our bed, right where we had been packing!) Costs were nominal (e.g., 8 euros in St. Barth). The most exasperating was BVI. Filling out all their forms took as long as all the other ports combined! And then Immigration charged me $.50 (yes, that is 50 cents!) I guess that was 10 cents for each of the 5 people onboard. The weather was "partly, partly". Showers every day, but also sunshine every day. A deluge one night half-filled the dingy. At least we had relatively clear weather for each of our two long passages (Barbuda-St. Barth and St. Martin-BVI).

Polaris