November 23rd: Carlisle Bay to Green Island

 I woke up at 6am, the latest I would wake up for the rest of the trip. We made coffee and breakfast, and weighed anchor, and started heading over to English Harbor via motor into a headwind. Arriving there, we identified the Pillars of Hercules, marked in many locations for good snorkeling, pulled in around the point, and anchor'd as close to the reefs as I dared, letting out about 20 meters of chain in 2.5 meters of sand. The snorkeling was much better than at Carlisle Bay, with lots to look at.

Boen's snorkeling equipment had been fixed, and he was now very good at snorkeling. The difference in just a couple of sessions was nothing short of astonishing. 

When we were all done, we knew we had to visit tank bay to reprovision the boat, as our provisioning had been incomplete two days ago, and we knew now what we needed. Deli meat, fruits, more bread, more eggs, and most important of all, chocolate! But first, we visited English habor (by accident), and found the bakery that Niniane had talked about (she'd stayed in English Habor before joining us at Jolly Habor), which was open and ate meat pies and other delicacies before we found our way to tank bay.

Tank Bay's supermarket was conveniently situated right on the water with a convenient dinghy dock. We purchased everything we needed, and then headed back to the boat for a quick lunch before driving the dinghy back to English Harbor to visit the old fort.

Doing the hike in the afternoon proved to be a mistake. It was hot, though we brought cold water in insulated containers, and the one mile hike was fortunately short enough that it wasn't a problem.

The view of the bay and water was great, though, and on the way back we saw not one, but two goats!

After the hike was over, we dingh'd back to the Chinook, and there realized that at 2pm, we could keep going and get a head start on Barbuda one day early. We hoisted anchor, headed back out, and headed East. motoring under full power, we realized that the outboard motor from the tender would hit the water and bounce back up, which was not good. A reduction of speed to 5 knots solved the problem, but we knew we would have to solve that sooner or later. Rounding the South East corner of Antigua at St James Bay, we raised the sails and that took care of the tender's problem.

A flotilla of 3 boats passed us, motor sailing. The wind was light, giving us no more than 3-4 knots, but anything was better than listening to an internal combustion diesel engine, so we were more than happy to sail into Green Bay, where we pulled pulled into a Bay of what looked like a flotilla of 20 sail boats and a couple of power yachts. Taking advantage of our shallow draft, we pulled deep into the Bay, well ahead of other boats, dropped anchor, and snugged it up, taking only one final swim to check on the anchor before settling in for the evening.

We were going to sail to Barbuda the next day, and I was excited about it!