Antigua - An Unexpected Delight!
by Alan Ewart


It was the 29th November 2004. I'd had a bad day, I was tired, it was cold and it was wet. To be charitable I was not in a great mood when I got home and logged on to check my messages. As I scanned my in-box I spotted a message from Dive magazine entitled 'Dive Magazine Competition'! The message read "We have just drawn last months competition and I'm very pleased to let you know that you have won the trip to Antigua. Please ring to discuss your prize". I thought "Yeah right!" and ignored the message for a while. After a short time I rang the magazine and confirmed that I had in fact won a weeks holiday to Antigua staying at Sunsail's Club Colonna on Hodges bay in the north of the Island. Needless to say I was ecstatic. I've never won a major prize in my life.

It took a few weeks to settle all the arrangements with Sunsail, but we eventually decided to travel in November 2005. This would give us the chance for some winter sunshine and as it coincided with our wedding anniversary I managed to store up enough brownie points to cover the whole of next years diving season in one fell swoop.

Club Colonna is a sunsail sailing club, and I must confess as a non-sailor it is not the sort of place I would ordinarily consider for a holiday, but hey, it was free, it's in the Caribbean and there is an on site diving school! I'll give more information about Sunsail and Club Colonna later. Sunsail Website

Holiday booked my first stop was the BSAC travel club web site to check out the information about the diving in Antigua. There wasn't much, and the comment 'No one would suggest this is great diving, even in Caribbean terms' lead me to expect mediocre diving. No matter I thought, at least the water will be warm and clear. In the event I was delighted with the quality of diving available.

The dive operator at Colonna is Ultramarine . Not unexpectedly Ultramarine is a PADI operation and holds the Island's only 5* resort status. I was delighted to find that all of the staff had a really good understanding of the BSAC and BSAC qualifications. Once I contacted the office I had a really friendly and welcoming response. Every employee I came into contact with, from dive guides to boat skippers to the mini bus driver repeated this friendly approach.

We arrived in Antigua on Friday 11th November having flown with Virgin Atlantic from Gatwick. The flight is a long one as Virgin touch down in Barbados first; this adds a couple of hours to the already lengthy journey time. It is possible to fly direct with First Choice and as the seat pitches on both services are similar I would consider this in future, that said with Virgin allowing you two bags weighing up to 32Kg each the longer journey time may be worth it for many people.

After breakfast on the next morning I wandered off in the direction of the dive centre. Half way there I heard an almighty bang and almost dived for cover. A huge pall of black smoke revealed the source. A boat was on fire just outside the dive centre door. My first thought was 'Is anyone hurt'? My second, 'I bloody hope that's not the dive boat'! In the event it was a private boat belonging to the maintenance manager! Fortunately no one was injured. Once the boat fire abated I was able to get into the centre and book four days diving and a night dive.

The best diving in Antigua is around the south of the Island so Ultramarine sends its qualified divers to St James Club in the South East of the Island. The mini bus transfer takes around 30 minutes and you only need to move your kit once as the staff at St James look after it for you, even washing it in fresh water each day. A great service! Ultramarine's large hard boat is powerful, spacious and well laid out. It could easily carry 16 divers but never carries more than 12 divers. To ensure that no one gets left at a site a 'Dan' tag system is employed, just one example of the companies commitment to safety. It is possible to rent quality kit if you don't want to take your own. Everything I saw was made by Mares was in very good condition and looked almost new.

With a fast boat it is possible to dive around smaller Islands including Barbuda and the Islet of Redondo. Marine life is very good with healthy colourful reefs, interesting topography and frequent encounters with turtles, dolphins, jacks, and barracuda. Sharks, stingrays and eagle rays are seen regularly. Unfortunately weather conditions when I visited precluded travel to the offshore Islands I even lost a days diving. A tropical storm (gamma) to the North of us meant that the Island was subject to high winds, big seas and reduced visibility, that said I did manage to visit some very enjoyable sites.

Rick's Drift
My first dive of the week and to be honest I wasn't expecting a lot so as the blue water closed in over my head I was pretty surprised to see a huge school of Jacks at 10M. Now I have no idea who Rick is, but he has a very pretty dive site named after him. As we drifted on a very gentle current I could see that the reef was in great condition with soft corals and colourful sponges in abundance there are also numerous large barrel sponges around. Maximum depth was around 25 metres and the current was negligible, lovely easy relaxed diving.

Stingray Alley
This site is a wide rock cleft, which has a large area of sand at the end of the gulley. I'm sure it is a great spot for stingrays, but needless to say there were none when I visited. There was however goatfish, a frogfish and a really inquisitive barracuda that swam within feet of the divers and was enticed to follow us through much of the dive by reflecting the sunlight off a knife blade.

Sunken Rock
A very enjoyable site on a pinnacle of rock that rose to within a few metres of the surface. The seaward side of the pinnacle falls away to an interesting swim through at around 40 metres. The reef is a riot of colour with hard and soft corals, gorgonian, lots of reef fish and big schools of jacks and snapper. In the right conditions I would bet on seeing reef sharks at this site. A night dive on this site revealed a number of large rays.

Pillars of Hercules
A really pretty shallow dive site with a maximum depth of around 15 Metres. The main points of interest are around some large rocks where peppered and green Moray were in evidence, I also found a 2 Metre Nurse shark asleep in a rock cleft. This excited my buddy no end, as it was his first shark sighting.

Eric's Garden
On this occasion I do know who Eric is. This site is situated directly below a very large house on a headland, the house is owned by rock star Eric Clapton. The coral garden reveals Elkhorn, gorgonian and a host of soft corals. Being a shallow site the great light, interesting rock and coral formations and plethora of reef fish and nudibranchs make this site a very interesting one for the photographer. Once again I found plenty of Moray's and another nurse shark on this dive.

Unnamed site
Weather conditions on my final day's diving severely restricted our choice of dive sites and with several members of the group feeding the fish it was decided to dive an unexplored site just to the South of the famous English harbour. The site was only about 10m deep and consisted of a large number of small low-lying reefs. I found this a really interesting dive and spent my time searching out small reef fish and Nudibranchs. Once again I found a small nurse shark resting amongst some rocks.

In summary, the diving was great, the dive operator friendly and professional, and the 'American' two-tank dive system meant I'd been out for two dives and was back with the family in time for lunch. This worked very well for me, but for those of raised on square profile British diving the surface intervals between dives did make me long to have Nitrox in my tank. Hopefully this will be available in the not too distant future. Ultramarine has plans to expand through the Eastern Caribbean and when this happens they will be the name I look for when I travel to the region. My experience was that the company is truly dedicated to the highest standards of customer service. If something goes wrong they undertake to put it right with no quibbles.

So I was more than happy with the diving side of the holiday, but what about non-diving activities and the facilities for non-divers and children? Well, Colonna is a sailing club so there is unlimited access to a wide variety of water based activity. Sailing in a wide variety of boats and dinghies, windsurfing, sea kayaks, logic powerboats were all available either free or at a small charge (about £5) to cover fuel costs in the case of the logics. RYA courses were available including level 2 powerboat for the aspiring coxswains amongst you.

My 7-year-old son and I were lucky enough to see green turtles on the surface whilst sailing and kayaking. As you can imagine he was thrilled. Sailing was a new activity for him, but the free kids club had at least one sailing activity every day for the kids. Suffice to say that this is the first kids club he has ever wanted to go to every day, the staff were amazing and the supervisory ratios were very high. The hotel had available a wide range of excursions and activities. These were well attended and seemed to be of good quality, though to be fair they are not really our thing.

The accommodation at Colonna was of a good standard and the food in the largely self-service restaurant was of good quality. The bar area hosted entertainment several times over the week we were there, the staff were helpful and friendly and we found several very good quality restaurants within a mile or two of Colonna. These tended to be at the top end of the market, but the food was great and we were on holiday.

I guess the acid tests of any holiday is whether or not you would go back and whether you would recommend it to a friend. Well to the first question without doubt. I intend to go back to Colonna in a year or two with my son so we can both learn to sail, after all a man shouldn't restrict himself to one expensive hobby!! To the second question, would I recommend Colonna and Ultramarine to a friend, well I just did, to about 50, 000 of you. A superb location with a range of activities to suit everyone from the most active to the beach lover, great for all ages and high class warm water diving thrown in. What on earth are you waiting for?



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