Barbudahhhhhh!
Over the years, I’ve read about Barbuda. It is to Antigua what Anegada is to the BVI, and the Out Islands to Nassau and Freeport. Simply put, a pure beachy indulgent escape that is a magnet to me. It’s a long sail to Barbuda – 30 miles of open ocean – so we leave early. Once we leave Antigua’s orbit, we won’t spot flat Barbuda until we’re less than 5 miles out, and we’ll be bumping and hobby-horsing upwind for most of our 5.5 hour sail. The last hour, we motorsailed since the crew were getting hungry and we wanted to arrive with full sun overhead so as to be able to thread through patch reefs to find a good spot to anchor.
Our chosen anchorage is near Coco Point, the southeast tip of the island and the beginning of a 5-mile long pinky-white sand beach. The only immediately visible sign of habitation looks to be a turquoise colored outhouse with a windsock; this later turns out to be a guard house marking the beginning of the grass runway of Coco Point Lodge, a small and exclusive resort. The K Club resort is also on this beach, but it’s shuttered for now. After a quick lunch of tuna salad on crackers, we take off for the beach – snorkeling (not-so-good this day, as the winds and seas have churned up the sandy bottom), swimming, walking. It’s spectacularly pretty here, the stuff of a beach lover’s fantasies: powdery sand, crystal water, gentle waves, and no one around but our friends. When we wander towards Coco Point, a security guard tells us – politely – that while he can’t keep us off the beach in front of the lodge, he’d request that we didn’t linger; also, our money is no good there. Their loss, as we’d be willing to spend at a place that welcomed us; moreover, there’s plenty of beach for all of us. In the evening, the moon is so bright that Rick and I go ashore with no need for auxiliary lighting to guide our way.
Overnight, the wind picks up and the gentle waves crash more insistently ashore. I wake up to the sound of donkeys braying. We’re just not prepared to leave Barbuda, so we decide to pull up the anchor and move to another beach for the day. 5 miles of perfection just isn’t enough, so we round southernmost Palmetto Point and anchor off the small strip land that divides the 11-mile beach from the Codrington Lagoon. This beach is similarly pretty, and even more deserted, but it slopes quickly into the sea. Indeed, a few steps off the beach and you’re neck deep in water (but you can see your toes). The beach is interesting for walking, and across the lagoon we can see the small settlement of Codrington, though we have no interest in going there. After lunch aboard, we return to Coco Point while the light is still good, and anchor a bit closer to shore for yet another gorgeous afternoon and night alone in this anchorage.
A James Bond Thanksgiving
As enthralled as we are with Barbuda, and as willing as we were to forsake Thanksgiving at home, our essentially American hearts can’t give up some marking of the holiday altogether. Our plan is to head for Dickenson
Need anything more be said?
Bay, a popular and populated (but pretty) bay on the northwest coast of Antigua where we figure we’ll have plentiful choices for a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner. Our plans are for naught, though, as it’s clear once we are in Antigua’s lee that a heavy northwesterly swell would make Dickenson Bay uncomfortable, if not untenable. Plan B is to return to Deep Bay, which we manage by early afternoon. We have turkey sandwiches for lunch, so as to be able to say we had turkey on Thanksgiving.
We head ashore to see about dinner plans, as well as to explore the beach and hike to Fort Barrington, which crowns the headland to our north. And so begins a day of dinghy mishaps, caused largely by the swell but also by conflicting “expert” advice. With Rick as dinghy captain, Bob is ready to jump ashore and pull the dinghy up the beach. With a breaking wave behind us and a sharply sloped bottom, timing is crucial for that jump. Alas, Bob’s timing was not quite right (the risk of taking the advice of the majority over the advice of the dinghy captain), and he takes an action-hero-style rolling tumble onto the beach. Luckily, no harm came to him and we all had a good laugh.
As we walked down to the beach to Andes restaurant (named for the shipwreck in the bay), the rough-and-tumble beach shack look of the place conjured up visions of a real down-island meal like curried goat or fish creole. Unfortunately, the mostly-empty Royal Antiguan hotel was only serving dinner in one place, its “fine dining” restaurant Barrington’s. While I was arranging for us to have dinner there, and we were settling into drinks at the bar, Rick thankfully noticed that the swell had come further up the beach than anticipated, and had taken with it our dink. He and Bob ran to get it, grateful that a beach walker thought to grab the painter.
A view of Deep Bay's beach from Andes restaurant. Where's the dinghy?
Thinking better of leaving the dinghy unattended (which I might mention was a brand new 12-foot RIB with a brand new outboard), Rick and I sacrificed ourselves to stay on the beach while the rest of the crew hiked up to Fort Barrington. They reported beautiful views, piles of goat dung, and the overpowering stench of goat dung. I’m happy I’ll be able to enjoy the views by looking at their photos…
We readied ourselves for Thanksgiving dinner, glad to have learned that casual dress was more than acceptable (as long as we weren’t sloppy). Luckily, we timed our dinghy landing well enough to avoid splashing our relative finery, and walked to the resort’s main building. There were no guests about at all, only staff. The building looked like my
1960s era college dorm, with about as much style. And the dining room was completely empty except for staff. The parquet floors, potted palms, and floor-to-ceiling drapes made the room look like it was awaiting the entrance of Sean Connery and Jill St. John in “Diamonds Are Forever.” Once everyone had decided to order the Barbudan lobster (that we’d been unable to procure in Barbuda, as the famed George of “Garden of Eden” was off island), the waitress informed us it was not available. So, we settled for food was reminiscent of our mothers’ marginally successful attempts in the early 1970s to make “continental” cuisine like duck a l’orange or salmon mousse – and six Barbudan lobsters sighed in relief that they were spared that fate.
Over the course of our subdued meal, only one other table was ever occupied. Either there truly were no other guests at the hotel, or everyone knew well enough to escape. And so we, too, eventually made our escape, getting massive cases of dinghy butt as we got swamped by a wave.
Lifestyles of the Hip and Fabulous … and Their Babies
It seems that in this day and age, every island has an “It” resort of the moment. And so, the “It” resort on Antigua of, perhaps, a year or two ago was Carlisle Bay. For those of us willing to spend $800 a night for a charter boat (for 6 of us), we can visit an exclusive resort where the room tariff is at least that much for two.
And so we sailed for the south coast of Antigua, under the watchful crater of Montserrat’s smoke-belching Soufriere Hills volcano some miles to the southwest, to achingly lovely Carlisle Bay. With a backdrop of lush green hills with almost no development, the horseshoe-shaped bay has at its head a palm-lined beach which is bordered with low-rise two-story buildings housing the self-consciously chic rooms of the resort. Unlike the Royal Antiguan, the beach here is occupied by many hotel guests, most of whom appear to be young couples toting very, very, very lucky babies and toddlers. Unlike Coco Point, the resort doesn’t actively discourage us from visiting; indeed, there is actually a DINGHY DOCK here.
Carlisle Bay's restaurant Indigo proved to be a lovely settling for lunch, even though we were a bit salty and sandy. But the view from our cockpit, at sunset, was even more appealing.
We decide we’ll have lunch here, and have our planned boat lunch for dinner aboard. Lunch is served beachfront at Indigo on the Beach, an open-air pavilion. Most of us splurged on that long-wished-for Barbudan lobster (either in a salad, or tempura), while Skip and I decided to see what a $24 burger was like. I’m happy to report that it was one of the most sublime burger experiences of my life, well worth the price of admission. Each element was a cut or two above the norm – the beef was Kobe and cooked to perfection; the onions were caramelized onion marmalade; the bacon was a crisp round of Canadian bacon … well, you get my drift. I’m always willing to pay the price for value, and in this case, felt like I got it.
Before returning to Drooy, we strolled to the end of the beach to do some commerce with the beach vendors in their shacks. I don’t guess they did too much business with the well-heeled guests of the resort, but we happily plunked down cash to get matching (but different-colored) Wadadli Beer shirts. Later that evening, Bob and Phyllis were tempted to return to Indigo for dinner, but the lure of the cockpit proved too strong, and soon Bob was leading the team effort to make tuna melts for dinner.
