An hour before we cast off the dock at English Harbour to bareboat Antigua, my wife heads into the little grocery store beside the Antigua Yacht Club at Falmouth Harbour for some last minute provisions.
My job is to pick up the Wadadli beer and a bottle of English Harbour rum.
You’d think that would be a no-brainer but I make the mistake of stopping just outside , beside a dockside café, at a bulletin board gracing the wall, tattered pieces of paper tacked to it, fluttering in the omnipresent Trade Winds.
I am smitten.
One slip of paper reads: “Jenneau 49 – seeking crew, Antigua to Norway.” Another one, ink faded, reads: “Crew needed to cross Atlantic via Azores.” Yet a third advertises a traditional 1933 sloop for sail.
I pull myself away from my Walter Mitty fantasies and notice the docks, concrete monstrosities jabbing the water like lobster claws.
Falmouth is the Caribbean’s answer to Cannes. Boats strain at the dock lines, sporting tenders bigger than my boat at home. A helicopter squats on the aft deck of one behemoth. It belongs to a Russian who owns a soccer team in England.
I barely remember the liquid provisions.
Two days later we drop the hook of our Sunsail boat to do lunch off an unspeakably gorgeous beach named Ffrye’s.
An ancient sugar mill crouches on shore; a strip of white sand divides aquamarine waters from deep green hills with an undulating horizon line punctuated by royal palms. The beach is empty.
Five days later, back on land, I’m driving north in a rental car along a gravel road through rolling meadows, past sudden serendipitous views of the sea.
I register the motto on the license plate on the car ahead of me.
“Land of Sea and Sun.”
It’s a misnomer. They should call Antigua “Land of Boats and Beaches”.
Consider this: Nelson’s Dockyard in English Harbour was, at one time, headquarters of the Leeward Fleet of the Royal Navy, one of the chief maritime holdings in the Caribbean. They still hold a race here around New Year's – the Nelson Pursuit – where the slowest boat gets a head start and a French flag and the rest of the fleet chases it.
Or consider a sunny afternoon at the end of April.
It’s the second day of Sailing Week, an event one photographer calls “the grand-daddy of regattas.”
Winds are 20 knots; the seas are lumpy.
The start line is southwest of Falmouth.
It is both battlefield spectacle and panoply of pomp and beauty. The sun paints the waters pewter. Whitecaps hiss. The fleet turns on the windward mark, marching toward you with the majesty of the Spanish Armada. One spinnaker sports the flag of Antigua on it.
Voluptuous mountains sporting pastel-painted villas gaze seaward at a procession of sails, a kaleidoscope on jeweled waters.
Antigua is the land of boats.
One day we go on one of those booze cruise catamaran trips.
We pass, in three hours, no less than four beaches that are so beautiful you know you’re headed there when you die if you clean up your act.
“In Antigua you can hit a beach every day for a year without ever repeating yourself,” says Erica Henry-Jackman of the Antigua-Barbuda Tourist Board.
Turner’s Beach is a prime destination for visiting cruise ship passengers. Here an old man in dreadlocks hawks jewellery, a woman offers to braid your hair.
Dickenson Bay is the hot bed of beaches, home to Rex Halcyon Cove, Tradewinds and Sandals Antigua Caribbean Village and Spa. The closest beach to St. John’s, it's not the place for solitude.
Jolly Beach offers great mountain views, incredible sunsets, a casino, extensive shopping and a number of dining options. At Hawksbill you can go for the all-over tan.
Deep Bay is a popular beach, while local Lisa Nicholson likes Pigeon Point near Falmouth.
Frye’s or Darkwood on the lee coast are my favourites and I have a soft spot for Jabberwock in the north.
Then there’s Barbuda’s lee shore, a seventeen-kilometre stretch of pink coral sand devoid of buildings and people.
Not the best beach for people-watching but arguably one of the Caribbean’s best.
And that’s barely a week’s worth.
Land of boats. And beaches.
One day we stroll English Harbour, tour the museum, lounge in a bar beside a cobblestone walkway where two hundred years ago two officers fought a fatal duel. One day we sun in the shelter of the ruins of a fort. One day we explore narrow alleys where boutiques now occupy colonial storehouses and shops that are more than two hundred years old.
Boats, beaches and history.
One night we ascend to the slopes of Shirley Heights for a party that’s been going on every Sunday but for two since 1981. Steel bands serenade the partiers gathered for dancing, food and one of the Caribbean’s best sunsets. Grey smoke wafts from great black barrels cut in half – jury-rigged barbecues where jerk chicken, pork, fresh fish and lobster sizzle furiously. And when the sun goes down, the main stage comes to life.
Boats, beaches, history. And fun.
On our last day on the water, stretched out in the cockpit of our chartered sailboat, having just snorkeled in the lee of a gorgeous reef, populated by fish that would do any aquarium proud, I sip on a Wadadli beer and gaze at a perfect beach on Green Island, at the surrounding lime-green waters.
“Land of Sea and Sun,” I say to my wife.
She looks up from her book. The non sequitur confuses her.
“The license plates. They should change the motto.”
I raise my hand, tick off the island’s features on my fingers.
“Know what they should put on their license plates?”
I pause, breathing deeply of the sea air. Sharon turns a page in her book. She doesn’t answer.
“Land of sea, sun, boats, beaches, and history. And fun.”