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KEY FEATURES...
| Top end, owner managed Antigua yacht charter company; a range of Bavaria, Beneteau, Jeanneau monohulls (39 - 50ft)and four catamarans (Bahia, Lagoon, Dean and Island Spirit); skippers and cooks on hand, sailing courses (with instructor skippers where needed), cell phones, watersports equipment and toys available, rendezvous scuba diving. Well priced and friendly, good Caribbean bareboat yacht charter experience. |
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REVIEW
Horizon Yacht Charters (Antigua) is a top-notch, owner-managed yacht charter company based in Antigua in the Eastern Caribbean. The company keeps a small but well maintained fleet of about 12 monohull yachts and catamarans in Jolly Harbour on the protected western shoreline of the island. They offer mainly bareboat charters, in yachts ranging between 39 and 50 feet (and with up to five cabins), but they have good flexibility - they can arrange a cook for the duration of the trip, Similarly they can provide a skipper, or one that stays with you for just a couple of days while you settle in. They also offer an all-inclusive plan on their largest yacht.
Horizon Yacht Charters (Antigua) is quite a young company – it was founded in 2003 - but it has a good pedigree as part of the Horizon network. Originating in the BVI, Horizon Yacht Charters now has four bases in the Caribbean, the BVI, Grenada (which covers the Grenada and the Grenadines), St Martin (on the Dutch side) and of course in Antigua. They all uphold the same high standards and personal service across the board, following the same policies and procedures towards clients. The four Horizon companies are all small, but they feel that this means that they can give a better experience to sailors by having a distinctly personal touch.
The company has seven members of staff. It is owned and managed by Jackie and Alastair Ashford, who are originally from Britain (with the owners of the original Horizon company holding a share). In Antigua it is Jackie Ashford that you will be in touch with when you make contact. She will oversee the various stages of the booking until your arrival on island. Alastair is the Base Manager, who takes care all of the chart briefings, and they are assisted on the ground by an operations manager, two technicians and a deck cleaner and an interior cleaner.
Their base is in the marina at Jolly Harbour, a huge and lively marina set in one of the deep bays on the meandering western coast of Antigua. While the island is perhaps better known for English Harbour and Falmouth Harbour in the south-east, Jolly Harbour has its own centre of gravity. It is a port of entry in its own right, so you can clear in and out of Customs there, and it gives onto the calm waters of the leeward side of the island, so your first tastes of Caribbean water are calm. From there it is a good run around (north) to Deep Bay and south to Carlisle Bay. Jolly Harbour is active all year round and it has good facilities (with plenty more on the way), including a large supermarket, a bank, several waterfront restaurants and bars and a chandlery. Jolly Harbour beach (about ten minutes walk away) is a superb stretch of sand and when you are docked at the marina there is a bar with a pool where you can relax. Spa treatments are available there too. The land-based part of Horizon’s ‘Sea and Shore’ holidays can be in Jolly Harbour itself, in an apartment with its own dock. Jolly Harbour is about 25 minutes ride from the airport.
From the moment of first contact you can expect everything to be personally tailored. Jackie is happy to help in the background as she makes sure that all the paperwork is in order and, for example, by pointing you in the right direction with flights and accommodation. Once you reach the island you can expect all briefings to be personalised (as opposed to in a group) and tailored to your itinerary. When you arrive you will be taken straight to your yacht to settle in. You can come to do the paperwork and have your chart briefing (held in Melini's Restaurant) later. Most people don’t leave till the next day.
Horizon will provision your yacht, and they can source rental sports equipment for you, such as a kayak and scuba gear. Or a hammock if that’s more your style. They can fix up rendezvous scuba diving (in which they come to your yacht and pick you up), even scuba instruction, in which case they will arrange for instructors to come to you. Horizon can also help out if you have a special request. You might want to throw a surprise party, hold a conference or a wedding on a remote beach, in which case they will put you in touch with the specialists on the island.
Antigua itself is well positioned in the Caribbean, for its ease of access, particularly from Europe (with so many flights coming in from the UK and mainland Europe), but also within the Caribbean itself. There are other islands to which you can sail both north and south. Interestingly Antigua has a long tradition of sailing, initially because of British naval activity in the area (just a quick look at the fortifications around English Harbour will show you how vital it was during the days of Empire). Some of the historical sights have been restored and so they are fun to explore.
The sailing itself is relatively challenging by the standards of say, the Virgin Islands. The seas are more exposed and there are fewer anchorages and mooring buoys. There is good blue water sailing between Antigua and nearby islands, however. Similarly, where the Virgin Islands have countless beach bars with a dock at which to tie up, here you are more likely to take your dinghy to an undeveloped beach, probably in a bay that has just a couple of other yachts. There is a good week’s sailing around the island, visiting the many beaches, particularly in the North Sound in the north-east, the historical areas and then a trip across to the near pristine island of Barbuda.
But Horizon Antigua offer an extra service in that they allow a one-way trip between Antigua and their sister base in St Martin to the north. This enables you to island-hop along the chain of the Lesser Antilles, passing Nevis and St Kitts (which have lovely small island culture) and then making your way across to St Barths and St Martin (much more developed, with some classic, tiny offshore islands fringed with white sand). They are currently designing a similar option heading south, so that you head via the superb sailing grounds off Guadeloupe to Dominica, an extraordinarily wild, natural island.
Horizon offer a stay-sail package, which includes a number of nights on shore in one of Antigua’s extremely broad range of hotels. Please see their website. And there is an additional variation on the theme in their Sea and Shore programme, in which you can take an apartment cum villa with a dock in Jolly Harbour itself, enabling you to head out for day sails if you want to stay close to hand. Finally Horizon offer Caribbean sailing courses at all levels, from basic keelboat sailing up to coastal passage making. The training can be spliced with a holiday if you wish. Horizon will arrange for a skipper to come aboard and provide instruction and training.
Jackie and Alastair Ashford have lived in the Caribbean since 2002, initially in the Cayman Islands, but their love of sailing goes back many years as Alastair has raced competitively since he was a nipper. About as long as their Antiguan Operations Manager Eugene, who skippered his first charter from Antigua to Barbuda when he was 11.
Horizon Yacht Charters as a whole now has around 70 yachts across its four bases in the Caribbean (35 in the BVI, 12 in each of Grenada and Antigua and a handful in St Martin, though this is set to grow). The four companies follow some marketing strategies in common and adhere to the same standards, but each base is fairly autonomous. All the yachts independently owned and they are managed by Horizon.
Yacht Sales
The company is an authorised dealer for Bavaria Yachts in the Caribbean and an approved agent for Fountaine Pajot catamarans. If you would like to own a yacht and put it out for charter at the times when you are not using it, then Horizon can enable the purchase and by arrangement they can include the yachts in their fleet. They obviously work with Bavaria Yachts and they do take other brands of yachts as well. |
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_normal.jpg "Snorkelling in Antigua, Caribbean bareboat charter")
