Last Thursday, February 2nd, we left Jolly Harbour, Antigua, and moved north the few miles to Deep Bay; traveling with another boat, Moody Blue, a 35' Moody, with Torontonians Alan and April aboard. The next morning, we followed Moody Blue over to Barbuda. It was a lovely sail to a lovely island.
Barbuda is one of the uplifted coral islands, and is literally two levels: mostly 10', with a small flat area of 125' called the Highlands. Like most of the Caribbean, it was originally deeply forested, but was deforested out of greed, and shows coral through thin sand in most places as a result of the topsoil being blown away by the hurricanes in the absence of significant vegetation.. It is best known for two features: an 11 mile beach which is the prettiest in the Caribbean and the largest and most biologically productive lagoon in the Caribbean.
How's this for a beach? It's called '11 mile beach'. We were here a few years ago with my sister, Lorna and her husband Brian. I'm sure they remember it well. During the full moon this week, it was spectacular.
A primary attraction, indeed the third thing that makes Barbuda famous, is the Frigate Bird Sanctuary. We elected to pay for a tour through the sanctuary, found in the northern part of the big lagoon.
Our group consisted of many of our old friends we keep meeting down here. Alan and April are from "Moody Blue" and Denis and Arlene are from "Tiger Lily II". George our guide and driver of the boat, knows the lagoon very well and in between stops flies along at an alarming speed compared to our 6 knots out on the ocean in our own sailboats.
George Jeffrey was our tour guide and water taxi driver. He was outstanding and we'd hire him again!
The frigate colony decorated the mangroves as if they were decorations on Christmas trees. It's time to mate, so we were able to see the males puffing out their big red gullets. Each female can lay only one egg per season and we were able to see lots of babies. These birds have been tracked for many miles north and south.
Because Terry is sick onboard the boat, Silk Pajamas, Kristin decided to come with us for a day out on the island with a bike rental. We were picked up by water taxi, our good friend George Jeffrey, otherwise known as 'Garden of Eden', and delivered into the town of Coderington.
The chairs on the deck of the bike rental spot were very unusual. You could really line up a few empties on the arms of these babies!
Here is Kristin, from the boat, Silk Pajamas, getting fitted for her bike for the day! Barbuda is one of the few islands flat enough to actually ride a bike!
Laurie and Kristin biking beside me. I had no accident while taking this photo!
We stopped along the west side of the island to see the beach and were a bit disappointed to see this tangle of litter that has floated in from the open ocean on the windward side.
We take a break from biking to do a little 'booty hunting'.
Nice to know that this toilet sea probably floated along for many miles before it was landed on the beach...
Framed again...
These caves were made up of one giant cave through which one could climb up through a sky light to the top of the highlands, 125 feet above. the highlands is an area of raised coral, flat on top that's about 2 square miles, with all its edges steep and cliff-like.
While up on top of this shelf, we had the most magnificent view!
This view demonstrates the topography and geology of this little island. Most of the coral below represents one flat uplift of the ocean floor by plate tectonics, and the cliff and flat "highland" is a further uplift. The cliff is an obvious break, where the highland came straight up. The whole of the island would have had great soil, made up of sediment from the many large rivers of northern South America. "Paradise Lost" as they say.
At the end of our biking day, we were waiting for George to take us to the other side of the lagoon. These lovely children came up to us complete with school uniforms, to give us flowers and hugs. After I took their picture, they wanted to see their photo. It's always amazing to me how these little ones take one look at the back of the camera and start hitting the buttons and enjoying the rest of the photos taken that day! Little wonder they learn so quickly!
After we arrived back at Cat Tales, we had just had our bath/swim in the ocean and were settling down to have a drink and watch the sunset. Well off from all the boats there was a dinghy I had seen earlier attempting to teach a young gal how to 'boogie board'. We could barely see them off in the distance, but after looking hard and long through the binoculars, we could see 2 people paddling and one person in the water. After a couple more minutes, Laurie hopped in our dinghy and headed out to see if they needed help. In this shot below, I have zoomed in as far as my camera will allow, and you can only see Laurie's boat and they are much further, so you can see how far they are out.
Laurie has gone a great distance to the left of the dinghy in trouble to pull a young lady out of the water. She had decided to swim from the dinghy to get back to the boat. I really don't think she could have made it with the current and distance.
Here is a close-up of Laurie hauling their dinghy back just at sunset! What lucky individuals they are to be still with us!
