Sure enough, when Barbara came ashore later with several worn and outgrown garments, the two little girls met us at the docks with a coconut, three limes, and five nutmegs—all that they had.
Our next port was the British island of Antigua (pronounced an-tee-ga, and not, to our dismay, a rhyme for “what a pig you ah,” as we had been fondly chanting). We were looking forward to spending several days at Nelson’s Dockyard, in famous English Harbor, so Larry Foley, whose vacation was running out, decided to do the rest of his island hopping by air.
We sailed from Dominica about sundown, setting a course which would take us up the west coast of Guadeloupe during the night. By 0600 we had put that island astern, in spite of a light and fickle breeze in the lee, which kept up most of the night nursing us along, and Montserrat was almost abeam to port. We were finding that Caribbean cruising, as many yachtsmen had discovered before us, has much of beauty and fascination to recommend it. Almost never were we out of sight of at least one island, mountainous and green, each one unique in itself. Only a growing eagerness to reach our own shores, after six years in foreign lands, kept us from stopping everywhere and lingering indefinitely.
The entrance to English Harbor is not too easy to spot from the sea, and even after we had identified its landmarks and knew from the charts that a harbor would open up sharply to port after making the narrow entrance, it took an act of faith to approach what looked like certain disaster. The directions had also been quite right in saying that a head wind usually blows through the pass and that an engine is desirable. It was.
At English Harbor we found a spot so hospitable, so historic, and so quietly relaxing that, for the first time in our mad rush homeward, we were tempted to linger. As Jessica said, it was like living in a museum, for we were surrounded by buildings which had been erected at the time of the British-American “incident” of 1776. A few hundred yards from the Phoenix was the Admiral’s House, where the commanding officer resided when English Harbor was the naval fortress of the British West Indies and Nelson was a young lieutenant.
Jessica had a wonderful time scraping around in the dirt of the ruins and coming up with likely-looking coins and buttons. One coin turned out, upon polishing, to be a beaten-up halfpenny of 1954, but a brass button, bearing a crown and anchor, looked sufficiently authentic to have dropped from the cuff of Nelson himself.
There is no village at English Harbor, no stores, and no accommodations for overnight guests. A single family, the Nicholsons, live in what was once the “Pay Office.” They had arrived nine years earlier in their own yacht, Mollihawk, from England and stayed on as “squatters” in the ruins. Now, with their tenure officially recognized and their untiring contributions to the restoration of a historic site commended and encouraged, they remain the sole permanent residents.
From English Harbor we made another overnight hop, this time to St. Martin (or St. Maarten, as the Dutch spell it), an island which is amicably shared by two European powers. The apocryphal story goes that a Dutchman and an officer from a French ship set foot on the island simultaneously. Each laid claim to it, but they agreed to settle the argument by walking in opposite directions from a given point, meeting on the other side of the island. The Frenchman, who walked faster, had secured the larger northern section, but the Dutchman gained the land containing the salt flats, which yield the principal staple of the island.
There is a sand bar across the entrance to the bay fronting Philipsburg, so we entered cautiously, watching the color of the water and sounding as we went. Once inside, we anchored just off the town and were quickly and efficiently cleared by officials who spoke absolutely correct English. We found Philipsburg an exceptionally clean and attractive little town. Jessica and Barbara, who went off for a walk by themselves, claim they even saw women sweeping the beaches. The rest of us were somewhat more interested in looking for a cold drink, but found that because we had arrived on a Sunday no cafés or shops were open. So we strolled the streets, greeted the villagers—who always smiled and gave us a hearty “Good day” in English—visited the salt flats, and wandered back to the beach to meet the girls.
The next noon we left St. Martin, bound for the American Virgin Islands. Twenty-four hours later we had covered the 120 miles and dropped anchor just off King’s Dock in Charlotte Amalie, the port of St. Thomas. With the national ensign and our yellow quarantine flag flying briskly, we waited to be cleared.