The Antigua police band wheeled onto the quadrangle in front of the 18th. Century officer’s mess in Nelson’s Dockyard, Antigua to the tune of It’s a Long Way To Tipperary, stopping in front of the Australian and New Zealand flags flying crisply on the cross trees of the dockyard flag mast in the balmy Caribbean trade wind.

The band played two hymns, the Ode to the Fallen was read and a single bugler played the Last Post, followed by a minute of silence and Reveille and there was not a dry eye among the fifty or so Antipodeans gathered at dawn on ANZAC Day Australian time. The national flag of each country was then lowered as each anthem was played.

That afternoon the yachts of the Caribbean Canter Yacht Rally anchored in English Harbour after an exhilarating 40 mile race from Guadeloupe, the first in a series of five races between Guadeloupe and St Martin via Antigua, St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Eustatius, and St. Barts. The incessant trade winds blew steadily across the course at 15- 20 knots, stirring white crested waves on the long Atlantic swells. A north westerly current put bonus miles under the keel to add to the 7 – 8 knot averages being clocked on the logs of the competing yachts. This was champagne stuff that brochures are made of.

The first two days of the rally were spent stooging around Guadeloupe and the Saintes Island group, a little known cluster of islands on which Napoleon once built a fort to keep an eye on British naval traffic coursing up and down the Caribbean. There was also a jail here and when it was shut down the inmates were set free to return to France. Not surprisingly few of them did and they are the ancestors of the present day population. Another famous Frenchman Jacques Cousteau has been remembered here with the creation and naming of the under water marine park on the west coast of Guadeloupe that bears his name.

Antigua Sailing Week started out as an end of season charter boat picnic but has attracted a growing number of grand prix racing yachts and the 41st. rendition of the event saw 18 divisions cross swords on the water. On land a party program tested the most ardent reveller. The common denominator at all race week “jump ups” is of course West Indian rum and a punch served at the first Caribbean Canter gig on Shirley Heights, overlooking the whole of English Harbour and Falmouth, was warning shot across the bow of each of the rally participants! And well they might have been warned.

The next race in the Caribbean Canter Series and the first in Antigua Race Week was to Fort James at the entrance to St. Johns Harbour and the party on the beach, previously the Dickenson’s Bay bash, proved to be an occasion as attractive to the Antiguans as to the 2,000 or so yachties from all around the world. Food stalls offered BBQ chicken, spare ribs, lobster and hamburgers, all served with Johnny Cakes and potato salad. Several bands pumped out reggae music to the locals. “You havin’ a good time mon ?”, came the question from one. “You make sure you havin’ a good time mon”. There is lots of welcoming banter and the atmosphere leaves a warm glow – or was it the rum and ting?

In the interests of our by now somewhat jaded constitutions we then parted company with the Race Week fleet and set sail for St. Kitts on a building 15 knot easterly. St. Kitts and Nevis together comprise a separate country so we had to complete the rather tedious clearance formalities all over again. The customs man allowed me to complete my entry form before informing me that he had wrongly inserted the carbon paper, presumably so that he could watch me fill out the form all over again! “How many dogs and cats do you have on board, what is the brand and horsepower of your outboard motor, how many masts do you have?”, etc. etc. All of this to pop music coming from his desk top computer, which clearly was not employed for any other purpose. As in Antigua English is the language but it might as well be Dutch given that the distinct clipped accent and West Indian idioms make comprehension a real challenge.

St. Kitts and Nevis both featured in the British-French sugar powered arm wrestle during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; hence the mixture of place names like Basseterre and Charlestown. It is impossible not to conjour the images of square rigged frigates locking horns to the thunder of cannons, the staccato crack, crack, crack of small arms fire, the smell of burning flesh and war cries from the rum lubricated combatants during the ebb and flow of the contest for naval supremacy in these waters. Further evidence of this conflict has been excellently preserved at Brimstone Hill on St.Kitts, a UNESCO Heritage listed site that also offers spectacular vistas across to St. Eustatius.

Nevis is smaller and greener than St. Kitts and appears to have been wealthier in its heyday. Wealthy could not be used to describe Sunny, proprietor of the Sunshine restaurant on Pinney’s Beach just north of Charlestown. His four-posted open sided establishment planted in the sand next to the beach offered fresh lobsters, prawns, chicken and pork spare ribs accompanied by salad “ I grow it by meself mon” all following at least one of his killer bees, a potent rum based concoction that has been written up as a must in all of the Caribbean pilot books. “De mix I don’t tell to no-one mon, not even the brand of de rom”.

A drive to the Montpelier Plantation resort and the Golden Rock restaurant hinted at the opulence of bygone days but when the Nevis government ran up a 300,000,000 Euro deficit subsidising sugar in 2005 the golden era finally came to an end and these days the land lies largely unused for commercial agriculture. As in so many places tourism has taken over as the sole earner of foreign currency.

In St. Ustatia, the next island up the chain, there is little to attract tourists and the island’s revenue has been derived from strategic positioning in the supply chain of various conflicts; the American Civil War, for one. In the absence of conflict the island offered duty free trading and up to 200 ships have been at anchor at one time off the tiny port of Oranje. Today there is an oil terminal that stores petroleum for distribution by the small coastal trading ships to the islands in the area. Just to add a little spice St. Eustatius is Dutch to this day and the tiny population uses Florins as its currency, even though the Dutch themselves use Euros these days.

St. Barts is unashamedly French and plays to the tastes and fancies of the French nuevo-riche and anyone else who wants to pay $10 for a beer. The sand beaches are a big draw card for the sun worshippers and there was ample evidence of over exposure to the sun; some of the worshippers had already turned into human lizards. The main spectacle on the island apart from the nymphs who could not afford both pieces of a bikini was the flight arrivals at the airport; the twin engine turbo prop 20-seaters descending precipitously over a saddle before plunging to the away sloping run way, racing with cars on the road alongside before applying serious reverse thrust to avoid a dip into the electric blue briny at the end of the ever so short runway.

The terminus for the rally was St. Martin with its major international airport. Following Hurricane Hugo the story goes that they had to clear the yachts off the runway before they could re-open the airport after the passing of the 250 KPH breezes!

 The Caribbean Canter will be run again in 2009 to coincide with Antigua Race Week.

Details from Mariner Boating Holidays on 02 99661244 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .