Anegada Day1

The 06.45 ferry was the first thing I've seen here that happened on time. But a strong head wind and 'exciting' seas made a 60 minute crossing take nearly twice that.

Anegada is the furthest out island, and its immediately the strangest. Whilst the others have a strong volcanic sense and rise from the sea dramatically, Anegada is a coral and limestone island and is flat. And I mean very f-l-a-t!
The highest point is 6m.

The island is surrounded by reef and there is just one deep water way in to safe harbour.
As the Hurricane approached most people on Anegada left for the supposed safety of Tortola. Amazingly the Hurricane veered and only a trailing edge made landfall - it still ripped out every streetlight and power line and took out the comms, but these old old single story houses did surprisingly well. Tortola took the full brunt of the storm and those that fled had a pretty rough time there.

So our plan here is slightly different. There are approximately 600 residents and that (used to) can swell to a thousand with tourists. The island has a super basic nurse's office and one nurse. The fast boat, in calm seas, can be here in a little over an hour. So here the plan I've put together
is to train locals to be able to take emergency first aid measures to keep a casualty alive, to maybe evacuate them to the port, to stop them getting worse, until advanced help can arrive.
Ive à mixture of teachers and Girl Guides and retirees, but they all seem very keen. Necessity can do that.

After the first session we went to Loblolly Bay. How I wish I'd borrowed a waterproof camera. There's a good section of living reef: 3ft high purple sea fans, orange fire coral (avoid!), huge spooky brain corals and fish. Wow, so many fish. So many colours, so many sizes. Just wow.

After we'd wandered to Bamboo Bay for a beer (we collected two crates worth of plastic debris, even here so far from anywhere) we headed west to try and catch the sun. But it falls so so fast here, and the roads aren't built for fast. So we grabbed another beer and enjoyed a few different glows.