Our Grand Adventure

16th December 2025 | Odometer: 518nm | Guadeloupe & Antigua

We had made it to the northern end of Guadeloupe, despite some rather hairy moments with reefs. Port Louis turned out to be an quiet, calm anchorage that really was quite nice, but also felt strangely isolated. A few fishing boats around and some fishing pots, a couple of abandoned looking small sailboats anchored nearby and the entry to the fishing port. The streets of the town were so dry and dusty, the whole place felt like it was asleep in some hot-weather, time warp bubble.

We spent the day getting ready to make the crossing to Antigua – you know, cleaning, checking engine oil, greasing the stern gland and rudder, emptying the bilge (for the thousandth time) and just generally making sure everything was ship shape. Around 11am, I was just double checking the requirements for checking into Antigua… oh, oh dear… they required printed and stamped clearance documents from the previous country. But France doesn’t print or stamp their documents as it’s all online. Quickly, we started scouring the Facebook pages, apps, guide book and various chat groups to figure out what we should do – all the advice -> you MUST get it printed and stamped! 

Darn! There is no clearance office in Port Louis, so we dashed ashore and walked to the government office to see if they could help us out. They were closed for lunch. For 2 hours. It was SO hot so we walked to a shady spot by the beach while we figured out what we were doing. Hmm, we weren’t even sure if they would do the paperwork for us… we started looking into hiring a car and driving 3 hours to the next clearance office to get the paperwork, this was still possible we could just squeeze this in and still go tomorrow if we really hurried. We only had a really short weather window to make the crossing otherwise we would be waiting weeks! I decided to call one of the marinas first just to check if they had any advice… and what a relief! 

Turns out, you can just download your form, email it to the marina office (not even a government office) and they print it out, stamp it with the most generic stamp ever, and then scan it and email it back to you. Amazing. The lady there helpfully sorted it all out over the phone and even gave me instructions how to get the right form as the default form is somehow the wrong form… anyway… so now, where to get it printed?! 

We asked at the post office, the grocery store, the pharmacy, the government office was still not open… ah hah! The tourist office – surely! But they were also closed long after the lunch hours. We could hear people inside so I gave the door a knock – all good! They were just having a birthday party so they kept the door shut but they were actually open and were happy to help us! A really lovely lady there printed it out and turned out it was her birthday. What a relief – all sorted and ready to set out the next day.

A Not-So-Nice Northing to Antigua

We woke early to find our decks covered in bugs. Totally covered in black dying bugs. Oh well, that’s a later problem! We kicked off onto our journey!

Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down.

😨 <- my face

Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down.

🤢 <- Ryan’s face.

Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down.

6 hours later.

And then we got to Antigua! Pheeeeeewwww. 

In summary, just a bit horrid. North bound, with big easterly swells hitting us on the beam (directly from the side) the whole way. It was super uncomfortable and quite scary riding the big swells up and down and just lurching around. To cope with how utterly unhappy I was about the situation (Sea State Stress = 4) I just sat on the pilot house bench and stared at my feet while Ryan dealt with driving. Until I realised a few hours later that Ryan was looking… really pale and maybe even a little green. Thankfully by that point we had realised that there was very little driving needed and it was more a case of just letting the boat and the autopilot keep chugging along and riding out the crazy bumping around. Ryan recovered quickly and superbly navigated us into Falmouth Harbour.

Superyacht, what superyacht?

We had gotten a hot tip from another cruiser that English Harbour would be super crowded, but Falmouth Harbour would be great for anchoring. Entering into Falmouth Harbour was an experience I will never forget.

As we were approaching the narrow mouth there were so many sailboats in the area and a couple of big superyachts moving into one of the harbours. We were extremely aware of just how big that boat over there was and just how small the entrance was and just how expensive that boat is! 

We waited, then cautiously made our way in, leaving a nice big gap between us and the superyacht… as we rounded the corner, we suddenly see not one, not two, but five enormous superyachts along the docks a few hundred meters to our right. 😮 Then, you start realising that those are not buildings lining the bay, but another entire dock of superyachts! Then another dock, oh, and over there – another dock! Superyachts, everywhere! And they weren’t just in the marinas, a couple were moored in the deeper part of Falmouth Harbour, some in the entry way… it’s incredibly hard to describe just how big these boats are and how tiny it feels in our boat amongst them.

We pulled up and anchored, and headed into town on the dinghy to check in. Of course, the dinghy dock for all the plebs (aka us) was right inside the center of the superyacht marina. So, we are putt-ing in, surrounded by these behemoth boats, and you have some serious scale adjustment issues. Wow! That tender is bigger than our boat! Woah, that FENDER is bigger than our boat! Huh! That radar probably cost more than our boat, our voyage and our dignity combined! And they have five of them!

English & Falmouth Harbour

We had heard dire warnings about the difficulties of checking in in Antigua, but, I must have done something right because I had the friendliest bunch of folks check me in. One lady even gave me candy – what a surprisingly nice experience! 

Nelson’s Dockyard, in English Harbour Antigua is the most quintessential British Naval establishment you can imagine. A beautifully maintained working, historical dock yard, it feels like you have stepped back in time to the 17th century. Beautiful stone buildings, surrounded by perfectly manicured lawns and gorgeous sailing yachts all around.

The two harbours have mouths that are very close together on the southern side of Antigua, and only a narrow spit of land separates the two harbours, so getting between them is usually just a short walk. There is loads of cute little restaurants and cafes, a handy supermarket and quite a few bars around! We really enjoyed our time here. We had our FIRST breakfast at a cafe since we left the states in July! Breakfast is just not a thing in the French islands and in the rest it’s not a thing you really think of as breakfast haha. 

Another morning, we were having our coffee and Ryan just casually remarks, oh look, that guy is selling croissants! And I was immediately like, QUICK! GET OUTSIDE AND WHISTLE AT HIM!!! Haha, Ryan has the loudest whistle on the planet and successfully got his attention and we had fresh croissants for breakfast! What more can you want!

Water Worries

We really needed to top up our water and fuel, so I called around the marinas in Falmouth Harbour, no go. The only option was to pull up in a super yacht slip that was empty and fill up there – ahhh no thanks! So we chugged round to English Harbour and filled up at the fuel dock there. 

This was definitely not my favourite experience. There was a ridiculous number of ultra expensive boats in a very narrow channel. We had a wind blowing us off the dock and a super flash catamaran in close quarters right next to where we had to come in. The dock hand made life a little difficult but we got tied off and filled up with water. 

We had to spin a complete 180 right in the channel to get out of there, and of course a packed tour boat came through right as we did it. A boat load of people gawking and filming isn’t the best addition to what can be a bit of a stressful minute. The close proximity of all the mega-wealthy yachts made me want to just close my eyes and hide under a blanket. Ryan is a pro at manoeuvring though, and of course he nailed it, but it’s quite dramatic to watch as the engine makes such a loud noise as he uses extremely high revs to throw the back end of Perspective around in a tight turn. “Like driving a giant jet ski” was the description our training captain gave haha. 

Ryan’s Note: Yeh, it was tight, but honestly, it was fine. I was confident to do the manoeuvring and it really wasn’t a big deal.

We got back to Falmouth Harbour and anchored up again. I went and had a minor heart attack downstairs in delayed reaction to dealing with the English Harbour chaos. I think that the build up of several weeks of anxiety of the boat rolling, plus the horrible passage over, and a series of stressful events had really built up for me into everything just being too much that day.

Once I’d finished my slight nervous breakdown, Ryan hauled me off the boat to cheer up on a beautiful walk. 

We enjoyed walking around the point between the two harbours and got some gorgeous views in the evening. We treated ourselves to dinner at the Antigua Yacht Club and found ourselves people watching all the superyacht crews and their drama haha. I have never watched “Below Decks” but I think maybe we saw an episode over our time there.