Barbuda

     As indicated in our last posts, we weathered the "winter storm" in Antigua, and then headed up to Barbuda for a week.  We're back in Antigua now, and we'll catch you up on Antigua later.

    Barbuda is an amazing place. We sailed north about 35 miles and dropped anchor in cliche turquoise water just off "11-mile Beach," which is literally 11 miles of perfect beach with no humans.  We spent two nights there, before a big northerly swell (from the northeast's blizzard last week) arrived and forced us to move to a better protected location.

    We moved down to Spanish Point, which is on the south side of Barbuda, and is seldom travelled because of the uncharted coral heads all over the place.  However, with the sun in the right location (behind you) and some good eyeballs, you can pick your way through and have the area nearly to yourselves.  The chart for the area just has a bunch of "shoal water" marked, with a note that says "transiting to the east through Gravenor Bay is possible, but put a man in the rig and eyeball it."  Nice.

    Our anchorage in south Barbuda was amazing because with the nearly full moon, the water still looked turquoise, and that in turn reflected up into the clouds to make a pretty neat scene after the sun when down.

    While in this area, a couple of kite surfers came over, and when they saw us taking pictures, decided to show off a bit.  They were very talented and the pictures show just how much air they were able to get.  Apparently "kite" is a verb now, since they came over to ask..."Hey, do you kite?"  Unfortunately we don't.

    Ashore, there is not much to do in Barbuda, which is part of the appeal, but we did take a tour of the world's largest frigate bird sanctuary.  These are the birds with the big red bag on their neck that they blow up to attract a mate.  It was a neat trip.  We also rode our bikes about 30 miles along dirt trails to end up on the Atlantic side of the island at some caves and a nice beach.

   Barbuda was awesome, but the weather indicated it was time to move, so we are back in Antigua now for 3 more days before we head to the french island of Guadeloupe for some boat work and croissants.