TO SEEK, TO FIND, AND NOT TO YIELD: A family Atlantic adventure, Part 1 Peter Owens and Vera Quinlan (In 2004/5 Peter and Vera spent their honeymoon sailing an Atlantic circuit in their 12m Van de Stadt Plyades. Then in 2011 they found Danú, a steel 43ft Bruce Roberts Mauritius ketch, on the Rio Guadiana and sailed her home to Ireland and beyond – see Flying Fish 2015/2 and 2017/1. By 2019 they wanted to show their children – Lilian then aged 11 and Ruairí aged 9 – something of the cruising life, with an extended voyage to many different countries...). On 15th March, as the world began to go into shutdown, we were sailing up the west coast of Guadeloupe with ideas of going to Montserrat for their annual St Patrick’s Day parade. News began to filter through about countries in Europe closing down, so we made the decision to sail directly to Antigua. From a sailing point of view Antigua offers many safe anchorages for all wind directions. If we were to be locked down, we reasoned that it should be there. We managed to clear customs at Jolly Harbour minutes before Antigua closed its office there. News filtered through of how countries were dealing with sailing yachts and it was clear that movement would be seriously restricted. We had heard of a sparsely-populated island called Barbuda to the north of Antigua, surrounded by reefs and crystal-clear water, so it made sense to sail there as soon as possible before being prevented from doing so. We made the 30 mile hop a few days later and dropped anchor off a reef at Spanish Point, its southeastern extremity. This was indeed a wonderful place to be. The water was so clear we could see our anchor dug in from the bow of the boat. There was little roll as we were protected from the Atlantic swell by the nearby reef. Snorkelling was exceptional, with a whole range of sea creatures to see – sharks, eagle rays and stingrays, lobsters and a myriad of multiLilian in lockdown, Barbuda
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