Barbuda, day 1 – Coco Point

Thursday 24 May: Leisure awakening today, as we have no firm agenda to rush to. A bit of a dull morning, with dark clouds hiding the sun. Even so, the water and beach look magical.
After breakfast we put the outboard on the dinghy and go ashore for further exploring. First tootle along the beach toward the west end of the bay, where there is an equally destroyed resort. Then we walk the former gardens and ruins of Coco Point Lodge, and we try to imagine how they must have been. Lots of palm trees are springing back to life, but there is tons of debris all over, mostly roofing panels. It must have certainly been very pretty prior to the hurricane. The wind is still strong, but we venture to fly the drone; such a spectacular beach and color water, we can’t miss the opportunity.
Then Glen goes for a snorkel on a reef nearby. He jumps off the dinghy and as he turns around, he finds himself face to face with a manta ray, whose wings were stretching 3m wide, and the tail 3-4m long. Oops, good thing it decides to swim right passed him. Pretty corals and tropical fish, and lots of turtles.
As he dinghies back to Cloudy Bay, 3 wild horses were galloping on the beach. Quite a sight! Glen approaches them and one horse comes very close, but then gets flustered and they all gallop off.
Back on Cloudy Bay, we decide to go to Spanish Point, the south-east tip of Barbuda. So we up-anchor and motor the 3nm, fending the multiple reefs that are in the area. 2 catamarans are anchored here and we go to investigate both potential anchorage spots, but it’s too shallow for us and the sea quite choppy. We give it a bit of thought whether to anchor further out or return to Coco Point, and decide to return to our very pretty beach where it is calm, safe and quiet.
Once anchored to our previous spot, this time even closer to the beach, Glen goes for a quick swim to clean the weed on the hull. After the sail yesterday much of the growth was washed off, but there was some weed still on the waterline.
Then it’s BBQ time for our late lunch. Tuna. Afterwards there are lots of fish leftovers which we throw overboard. 5 very large fish jump on it, swallowing full bits of grilled fish! Ouch, how come they don’t get hurt swallowing all those bones?
Then it’s bath time… bath being the key word. We blow up the paddling pool (Oana’s tub) and fill it with hot water. It’s time to soak and relax before sunset. As she does just that, Glen is climbing the radar pole to polish the stainless steel mount of the radar and antennas. Not a dull moment for him as Oana points out the various rusty patches from her bath!
As we sit with a cup of tea, a catamaran comes in and anchors near us and 6 people dinghy ashore. Glen comments that they have not pulled their dinghy very far up the beach. Then, sure enough, 15 minutes later we see it drifting out to sea! Our dinghy is back on the davits for the night so we relaunch it and go rescue theirs. Once we have it in tow, we see 2 others are still on the catamaran. Ooph, they could have easily swam and got the dinghy as it drifted passed. Anyhow, they do thank us and we return to Cloudy Bay. Then we watch as the shore party return, waiting to their reaction of no dinghy where they left it. But there is no reaction at all. How disappointing! Maybe it’s not the first time for them to have their dinghy washed away.
After sundown we relax in the cockpit, then get back below to continue our video editing.
Oh, and worthy of mention is that today a) nothing broke and b) we didn’t spend any money! A rare day in a beautiful spot.