After our Epic Journey north, we’re ecstatic to have arrived safely in Antigua. And just like any other boat that arrived from outside this island, the first step is formally clearing in to the country.
In normal times, that means going through Customs and Immigration. In pandemic times, there’s an additional health check from the appropriately-named government agency Port Health. Antigua currently requires a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours before arriving on the island, as well as a variety of health forms and affadavits, in order to avoid a 14 day quarantine.
Very efficiently, at 9am local time two guys drove up in a dinghy to drop off some health forms for us to fill out. Not very efficiently, they told us they didn’t know what time the actual Port Health agent would be available to check us in.
Luckily for us, we only needed to wait another hour or so, and as soon as we were in touch we arranged to meet the local official, Mr. Edwards, under the flagpole next to the dinghy dock. He took our temperature to confirm we didn’t have a fever, looked over our documents, and asked where our PCR test results were. We explained that we’d been at sea for well more than 14 days, and that we weren’t able to get a PCR test before we left Chile. That was good enough – “No problem,” Mr. Edwards replied, “Welcome to Antigua!”
