The anchorage here is so pretty that I decided to extend my stay by a day and depart for Deshaies on the morrow. I puttered around the boat a boat a bit and went ashore on Green Island to see if there was a path around the island. I only found a short path that soon petered out and was only passable by goats or small crawling midgets so I returned to Zanshin. In the mid-afternoon I heard a short toot on a siren and saw that the Antigua & Barbuda customs speedboat with a couple of officers aboard was patrolling the anchorage and was pulling up alongside a Canadian-flagged boat several moorings away. I’d never once seen any active patrolling going on in Antigua and got very worried – images of large fines and troubles with officialdom flashed through my mind as I thought about what excuses I could offer to placate the officers during the upcoming inspection. I did go below decks and showered/shaved plus made the boat look presentable inside. In the end I decided to lay down for a nap since being on deck might trigger them to come visit me. A short light squall came through the anchorage and I took a peek out the side windows and didn’t see the patrol so I thought I’d been quite lucky and relaxed a bit; but a half hour later I looked out again and saw them boarding another boat several moorings from me and resigned myself to my impending inspection and fines…
After checking that boat the vessel went to the middle of the Green Island bay (a good mile away) and just hovered there for a while, then went at speed to the far end at Nonsuch Bay. A half hour later they zoomed past the anchorage and through the cut and I finally did breathe a sigh of relief at having been fortunate this time around and told myself that I’d never play with extending an inbound or outbound clearance again!
I got the engine off the dinghy before dusk and otherwise prepared for the 80 miles to Deshaies.
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