Rumble: Anguilla

After a few days in St.Martin, we got onto the boat and sailed for about six hours to Anguilla. We anchored in Road Bay.
Here is a view from a hill top, down on Road Bay. You can see the port on the left, and the old salt pond on the right. It was a lovely anchorage, with locals racing their boats on weekends. The beach was clean, for a main port that is, and offered lovely sunsets. There were only a few boats in the main port, typical for Anguilla, which seems to be off the beaten track for most tourists. I can not imagine why. The beaches were amongst the most beautiful we had ever seen in the Caribbean. We drove around the island for a day, to get a taste of the atmosphere. People were laid back and friendly. A really enjoyable island, without the mass tourism of St.Martin. We did two trips with the boat: to Sandy Island (you can see our boat anchored in a distance) and to the cliffs in Little Bay, which made good snorkeling. The weather was nice, about 27 dgr C in the shade. The water was 29 dgrs C. It was hard to imagine that just 10 days before, we were sailing in Belgium, in foul weather gear (see this post). Only one night, we had a "tropical wave" (a storm) passing us, the only one during our sailing trip. It held me up all night on anchor watch, as the wind turn around 360 degrees (it was the first time I experienced wind from the West in the Caribbean!). and had our boat swing a bit too close to another ship on a fixed mooring. At 1 am I actually had to get into the dinghy and help out another boat who had problems anchoring. For the sailors amongs you, I will post some 'bareboat charter horror stories soon...