Antigua & Barbuda

What two islands under one flag actually give a cruising boat

Antigua and Barbuda are one nation of two islands 30 nautical miles apart, and a yacht experiences them as two different cruising grounds rather than one. Antigua is hilly, reef-fringed and built out for yachting, with five separate harbours holding marinas, boatyards, a yacht club and the largest concentration of marine trades in the eastern Caribbean. Barbuda is flat, coral, thinly populated and almost undeveloped, with no marina, no boatyard and reef navigation that keeps most charter itineraries away from it entirely.

The distinction matters for planning. A week based in English Harbour or Falmouth Harbour covers Antigua's south coast, Jolly Harbour on the west and the North Sound on the east without ever leaving daylight motoring range of a haul-out yard. A visit to Barbuda is a separate decision: a 30 nautical mile passage each way, no port infrastructure beyond a single point of entry at Codrington, and an approach that the cruising literature has warned sailors about since the age of sail. Antigua's own tourist board still markets '365 beaches, one for every day of the year'; Barbuda has a fraction of the population and almost none of the yachting infrastructure to match.

When to be there: the season and the show calendar

Antigua's charter and racing calendar runs from December through April, and the two anchor events for owners are the Antigua Charter Yacht Show in December and Antigua Sailing Week in April, with the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta and the RORC Caribbean 600 filling in the rest of the season. Missing the calendar by even a week means missing the fleet, the parties and the marina space that gets fully booked around each event.

The Antigua Charter Yacht Show runs 4 to 9 December 2026, its 65th edition, across Falmouth Harbour Marina, the Antigua Superyacht Marina and Nelson's Dockyard, with around a hundred yachts on display for brokers and charter clients; it marks the formal start of the Caribbean season. The RORC Caribbean 600 starts and finishes in Antigua, its 18th edition setting off on Monday 22 February 2027 on the club's 600 nautical mile lap of eleven Caribbean islands. The Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta runs 15 to 20 April 2026 and 14 to 19 April 2027 at Nelson's Dockyard, wooden boats and classic rigs racing out of English Harbour. Antigua Sailing Week follows immediately after, 22 to 26 April 2026 in a shortened four-day, point-to-point format for its 57th edition, and 21 to 25 April 2027 for its 58th; early-bird entry for 2027 is USD 12 per foot if paid by 31 October 2026. The Salty Dawg Sailing Association's Caribbean Rally, roughly 1,500 nautical miles from Hampton, Virginia, typically starts around 1 November and finishes in English Harbour, adding a wave of bluewater arrivals to the start of the season.

A working yacht harbour with the Caribbean's deepest bench of marine services, and thirty miles north, an island that still humbles a chartplotter.

English Harbour and Nelson's Dockyard: the historic core

English Harbour is the deep, well-protected inlet on Antigua's south coast built around Nelson's Dockyard, the restored Georgian naval yard that gives the whole area its identity and its UNESCO World Heritage status. It is both a working marina, run by the National Parks Authority, and the base most visitors picture when they think of yachting in Antigua.

Nelson's Dockyard Marina offers around 30 stern-to berths on bow moorings and is reached on VHF 68; all three clearing authorities, Customs, Immigration and the Port Authority, share one building here, an easy walk from a Falmouth berth. Antigua Yacht Club, founded in 1967 by a group of hoteliers who began by racing Sailfish dinghies on Sunday mornings, sits in Falmouth Harbour next door and has grown into the organiser or co-host of most of the island's regattas, from Sailing Week to the RORC 600 to the Superyacht Challenge Antigua. The Shirley Heights lookout above the harbour, site of the well-known Sunday sunset party, gives the single best view of how the two harbours actually fit together.

Falmouth Harbour and the superyacht docks

Falmouth Harbour, immediately next to English Harbour and separated from it by a neck of land you can walk in fifteen minutes, holds Antigua's largest concentration of superyacht berthing and is where a big yacht actually ties up. Falmouth Harbour Marina, run by Antigua Slipway since 1994, is the island's largest mega-yacht marina, publishing a vessel maximum of 330 ft (100 m) and a draught limit of 20 ft (6.1 m) alongside a superyacht quay long enough to be separately described at 535 ft.

Next door, the marina long known as the Antigua Yacht Club Marina was gutted by fire on 2 and 3 October 2023 during Tropical Storm Philippe; it has been rebuilt and rebranded as the Antigua Superyacht Marina and Resort, with a further phase of construction due to start in summer 2026. Fuel is delivered dockside at up to 1,000 litres a minute, duty-free, and electricity is metered at USD 0.60 per kWh and water at USD 0.15 per US gallon; none of the marina's own berthing rates are published, and enquirers are directed to contact the office for a quote.

Jolly Harbour and the west coast: the budget port of entry

Jolly Harbour, on Antigua's west coast, is the island's second official port of entry and its main alternative to English Harbour and Falmouth Harbour, built around a marina, a boatyard and a residential development rather than a historic dockyard. It is also, by a wide margin, the cheapest place on the island to clear in and out.

Jolly Harbour Marina and Boatyard runs four concrete piers with around 155 berths for craft under 24 m, 9 further berths for vessels between 24 and 30 m, and 13 lagoon moorings, with a published draught limit of 4 to 4.5 m and two dedicated mega-yacht berths taking vessels to 200 ft. Its boatyard travel lifts haul to 75 and 85 tons and take catamarans to 33 ft of beam. Clearance here costs EC 85 to check in and EC 20 to check out, credit cards not accepted, against a considerably more ceremonial process at the English Harbour building; a family with children pays an extra EC 75 per child on departure.

North Sound and Parham: the working east coast

The North Sound, on Antigua's northern and eastern side, is a large, reef-protected sound holding the island's most modern boatyard and some of its best cruising anchorages, and it sees far fewer charter yachts than the south coast harbours. It is reached and left with care, since coral heads and shoal patches inside the sound demand a cruising guide and good light rather than a chartplotter alone.

North Sound Marina at Crabbs runs a 150-ton travel lift with a 30 ft beam capacity and a 22 ft maximum haul-out draught, room for around 250 boats ashore, and an optional 200 by 120 ft storage and refit shed built to Category 4 hurricane specification, with Budget Marine's chandlery on site. Green Island, inside Nonsuch Bay behind a barrier reef, and Great Bird Island, protected within the North East Marine Management Area, are the two anchorages most cruising guides single out here for snorkeling and shelter from easterly swell. Parham Harbour, on the same coast, is a third, lightly used port of entry with its own Customs and Immigration facilities.

Clearing in: customs, immigration and the cruising permit

Every vessel arriving in Antigua and Barbuda must clear within 24 hours through Customs, Immigration and the Port Authority, and every vessel needs a cruising permit before it can move between anchorages. Pre-registering online through eSeaClear or SailClear before arrival speeds up the process but does not replace the in-person stamping.

Call the Coast Guard on VHF 16 from six hours out, fly the yellow Q flag, and stay aboard until Port Health has cleared the vessel before the master goes ashore. The order ashore is Customs with the general declaration and six copies of the crew and passenger lists, then Immigration with ED cards and passports for everyone aboard, back to Customs for final approval, then the Port Authority to pay entrance, rubbish disposal, anchorage or dockage and the cruising permit itself; both US and EC dollars and Visa or Mastercard are accepted. Clearing out reverses the sequence, needs four copies of the lists, and obliges departure within 24 hours; crew leaving the boat need an onward ticket or a signed letter from the captain or a local agent. English Harbour/Falmouth Harbour and Jolly Harbour are the two ports of entry the fleet actually uses day to day, with Parham designated but little used; Barbuda's only port of entry is Codrington, and clearing there needs advance approval.

What it actually costs

No marina in Antigua publishes a public berthing rate card, so the real number is always a quote, and the closest thing to a published figure for the unpublished side of the bill comes from a yacht agency's own fee sheet rather than any government source. Budget accordingly rather than trusting a website's headline number.

Med Yacht Services' 2026 fee sheet for Antigua budgets customs clearance at USD 250 to 550 and immigration including escort at USD 250 to 500, with National Parks Authority fees carried at cost and surcharges of 10 percent for holidays and peak season, 20 to 25 percent for expedited events. The National Parks Authority's own published visitor passes, which cover anchoring inside English and Falmouth Harbours, run US 15 a day, US 100 a season, or EC 10 for residents. Duty-free fuel and up to nine months of duty-free spares, sails, rigging and provisions delivered to a vessel in port are a genuine saving for anyone doing serious work here, provided the captain declares each item is for the vessel; Epicurean Fine Foods at Jolly Harbour and St John's is the main full-scale grocery supplier, and everything on the shelves is imported and priced accordingly.

Why English Harbour is a marine services hub, not just an anchorage

English Harbour and Falmouth Harbour together hold one of the deepest benches of yacht refit, rigging and repair expertise in the Caribbean, which is why boats come here to work as often as they come to cruise. A vessel needing serious technical support has more of it within walking distance here than almost anywhere else in the region.

Antigua Rigging, in business 26 years, services Hall, Southern, Selden, Formula, Sparcraft and Z-Spars rigs in alloy and composite and runs full refit and project management alongside it. Antigua Slipway's marine railway, the boatyard behind Falmouth Harbour Marina, hauls to 200 tons and 150 ft length overall; the company announced a USD 2.5 million rebuild of the ageing underwater structure in 2026, intended to make it the largest single-vessel haul-out facility in the Caribbean once complete. Bailey's Boatyard runs a 70-ton travel lift and an 80-ton Ascon lift with hurricane cradles accepted by major insurers, and North Sound Marina at Crabbs, Jolly Harbour and Shell Beach add further lift capacity elsewhere on the island. Nothing on Antigua can lift a genuine superyacht hull for structural or paint work; that job is still a passage to another country.

Barbuda: the low island a chartplotter alone will not get you into

Barbuda is flat coral limestone with no point higher than about 125 ft, which historically made it one of the most feared islands for navigation in the West Indies because a ship could run onto its reefs before the island itself was visible. Modern GPS and satellite imagery have reduced the risk without eliminating it, and the approach still demands daylight, high sun and a slow, careful eye.

There are effectively no navigation aids around Barbuda, chart coverage is acknowledged by cruising guides as unreliable, and an estimated 200 shipwrecks lie on its reefs from the age of sail onward. Low Bay, on the west coast, anchors in 5 to 10 m over sand but is exposed to swell from the north and west; Cocoa Point, on the south coast, anchors in 5 to 8 m with moderate shelter from the trades but needs the sun behind the approaching boat to pick a path between coral heads. Cruisers who have made the passage describe roughly 30 nautical miles each way, a five to six hour daylight window once the reef-approach margin is subtracted from sunrise to sunset, and advice that amounts to the same thing from every source: go slow, watch the water colour, and turn back to deep water if the picture is not clear.

What makes Barbuda worth the passage, and what changed in 2024

The Codrington Lagoon Frigate Bird Sanctuary, reachable only by licensed boat from the Codrington jetty, is the second-largest frigate bird nesting colony in the world after the Galapagos and the single best reason cruisers give for making the trip. A new international airport opened on the island in October 2024, changing how guests, not just yachts, can reach it.

The sanctuary is best visited between September and April, with December the peak of the mating season when the males' red throat pouches are inflated; a local guide and a day's advance booking through the tourist office are required, and the entry fee is EC 2 for citizens and US 2 for non-citizens. Burton-Nibbs International Airport, which opened 3 October 2024 with a 6,100 ft runway against the old Codrington airstrip's 1,640 ft, now takes jet traffic including the Embraer E-170 and has full runway lighting for night landings, a material change for owners who previously had to bring guests in by boat or small charter plane alone. Barbuda's population, still recovering from the 2017 hurricane evacuation, was estimated at around 1,874 in 2026; the island remains thinly built and largely undeveloped compared with Antigua, which is precisely what draws the boats that do make the crossing.

Hurricane season and laying up

Hurricane season runs 1 June to 30 November with the highest risk from August through October, and Antigua's own cruising literature markets the quiet months as a genuine asset: an uncrowded base with several recognised hurricane holes rather than a place to avoid entirely. Most yachts that stay through the season haul out rather than ride it out afloat.

English Harbour itself is a well-known hurricane hole, and the island's yards, from Antigua Slipway and Bailey's Boatyard in the south to North Sound Marina at Crabbs and Jolly Harbour's yard, all secure hauled boats on concrete standing with tie-downs to deadmen, sand screws or one-ton concrete blocks rather than jack stands alone, and Bailey's cradles are specifically accepted by the major yacht insurers. Most hurricane-clause insurance policies require haul-out within 48 to 72 hours of a named storm warning, which is realistic here given the island's lift capacity, but it is worth confirming a yard has space booked well before June rather than assuming a slot will be available once a storm is already forecast.

لمين هو: An owner or captain who wants genuine refit and rigging capability alongside a stacked regatta calendar, and who is willing to plan the Barbuda crossing as a separate, daylight-only passage rather than a casual day trip.