Escape from Jolly Harbour

After the new gearbox had been fitted and tested successfully, the alternator and the boat instruments took some further days to fix. The electrical engineer spent many hours onboard Valent, once staying until 8 pm to complete a job. However with patience and dedication, the work was finally complete – we could hardly believe it!

After five and a half weeks of living alongside the boatyard wall, on Friday 19th April we were able to set off from Jolly Harbour Antigua and continue our Caribbean adventure – just for a couple of weeks though, as on 1st May we need to be back in Antigua to collect the crew who will help Will sail Valent back across the Atlantic to the UK. There was just time for a whistle-stop tour of a few of the islands north of Antigua.

Our first stop was Nevis, a 45 mile or around a 7 hour sail away in calm seas. It felt good to be out at sea again, with flying fish skimming the surface of the water and seabirds circling overhead – and as a bonus Will caught two barracudas on the way across, which sorted out our dinner plans for that night!

When you sail to another island, which is usually a different country, you must fly the flag of that country, plus a yellow flag until you have cleared through customs. We have been through many different flag changes during our trip through the Caribbean: in the photos above the flag for Antigua is being taken down, and the flag for Saint Kitts and Nevis goes up in its place.

It was good to be back out at anchor in a peaceful bay with only a few other boats for company – we caught up with our friends from ARC+ family boat Epiphany again there. Nevis is a small and low key island, people are very friendly and welcoming and it is much cheaper than Antigua. The water was crystal clear and we spotted numerous starfish, some red and some glinting golden from the sea bed seven metres below the boat.

After a few days in Nevis, an hour’s motoring further north on a calm day took us to the southern part of neighbouring island Saint Kitts, which proved to be just as peaceful and laid back as Nevis. Whitehouse Bay where we anchored has a cool beach bar with a great dinghy dock, which sadly was affected by Covid and has now closed down. The chairs and wooden deck are still there though, and people bring their own drinks and hang out as if the bar is still open.

In Saint Kitts we snorkelled over a shipwreck, which serves as a good warning of why you need to keep a watch out for unmarked rocks.

The next stop on our short tour was to be Saint Eustatius (also known as Statia), a small volcanic island which is part of the Netherlands and used to be the trade capital of the West Indies in the late 1700s. We set off early in the morning with a four hour sail ahead of us, and soon had our mainsail, genoa (headsail) and staysail powering us through the water at around 7 knots. Once we left the protection of land behind and were in the channel between Saint Kitts and Statia, the wind strengthened to 18-20 knots and the sea state was quite turbulent. We approached Statia to find that the bay where we were planning to anchor looked very rolly and would be an uncomfortable place to spend the night. So our visit to Statia turned into a sail-past, and we continued our sail on to our next destination: Saint Barts.

As we rounded the north of Statia we had to turn Valent closer into the wind to achieve the direction we needed, which made for a more uncomfortable sail, crashing into the waves. After five weeks in the boatyard our sea legs were out of practise and required reacclimatising! As we sailed towards Saint Barts at one point five islands were visible – behind us Saint Kitts, Statia and another small island Saba, and ahead of us Saint Barts and Saint Martin.

After a further five hour sail and a longer day at sea than originally planned, we arrived at Saint Barts before dusk, and quickly took a mooring buoy for an overnight stay. This morning (Friday 26th April) we have re-anchored further out in deeper water – Sophie and I have perfected our job as anchor team over the last few months, having had lots of practice! So we now have a few days to explore Saint Barts before we need to return to Antigua at the start of May to collect the new crew.