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Scuba Diving in Jolly Harbour
A marina village on Antigua's sheltered west coast and the island's main diving base. Its calm, leeward water gives easy access to the reefs and wrecks of the west and south coasts, including Cades Reef and the sunken British gunship Andes, a short boat ride offshore.
Why here
Jolly Harbour is the practical home of diving in Antigua. Sitting on the leeward west coast, it is shielded from the trade winds that stir the Atlantic side, so the water is usually calm and clear and the boat rides to the sites are short. The signature reef is Cades Reef, a long protected ribbon off the south-west coast with coral heads, sponges, parrotfish, barracuda, turtles and the occasional eagle ray in easy 12 to 18 meter depths. For structure there is the Andes, a three-masted British merchant barque that caught fire and sank in Deep Bay in 1905 and now sits upright in shallow water as an artificial reef you can circle on a single tank, plus the dramatic Pillars of Hercules rock formation at the harbor mouth. The conditions are forgiving enough to learn in and varied enough to keep certified divers interested, and the two long-running PADI centers at Jolly Harbour run the full ladder of courses as well as daily two-tank guided dives. This is warm, low-stress Caribbean diving with reef and wreck within the same morning.
Best months
Water is warm all year, roughly 26 to 29 degrees, so a shorty or 3mm suit is enough. The leeward west coast stays calm and clear for much of the year, with the best visibility often in the drier winter and spring months. Most sites run 9 to 25 meters, suiting first-timers through to certified divers, and the reefs are protected, so take nothing and touch nothing. Book with the local PADI operators at Jolly Harbour, who run try-dives, courses and guided reef and wreck dives.
Getting there & around
Jolly Harbour is about 25 minutes by road from V. C. Bird International Airport and 20 minutes south of St. John's. The dive centers are based in the marina and commercial complex, offer pickup from nearby west-coast hotels, and run short boat trips to Cades Reef, the Andes wreck and other west and south coast sites. No car is needed once you are based in the harbor village.
Skill levels: beginner, intermediate, advanced
Schools & guides (2)
Antigua Scuba School
SchoolAntigua Scuba School is a PADI and SSI center at Jolly Harbour running two-tank guided boat dives, night dives and the full course ladder from Bubblemaker and Discover Scuba through to Divemaster. Its instructors bring more than sixty years of combined dive-industry experience, with the lead instructor logging over 15,000 dives, and it also teaches specialty courses in shark conservation and underwater naturalist study over Antigua's west and south coast reefs.
Indigo Divers
SchoolIndigo Divers is a PADI dive center at Jolly Harbour on Antigua's sheltered west coast, operated by Waterline Enterprises Ltd. It guides two-tank boat dives daily over the protected reefs and wrecks of the west and south coasts, from Cades Reef to the Andes wreck in Deep Bay, and teaches courses in both English and German with PADI eLearning. Small groups and pickup around Jolly Harbour make it a steady choice for certified divers and first-timers alike.
Also good for scuba diving in January:
Torn between Jolly Harbour and Palau for January?
A plan settles it for your skill and budget, same-day.