Shoal Bay East

Beaches & CovesShoal Bay Village, Anguilla

August·Quiet month

Jul–Nov

The beach's low half: sargassum lands thickest and hurricane season peaks August to October, when much of Anguilla — hotels and restaurants — closes for September and reopens by November. Still yours are the reef, the parrotfish and turtles nesting up the sand.

Year-round The coral sand, the fringing reef and its parrotfish and eagle rays are there every day; what changes is the water's clarity, the summer sargassum, and the turtles that nest from spring into autumn.

Shoal Bay East is made of the reef it faces. The sand along its two-mile arc is coral, broken down and washed ashore as a powder white enough to hurt your eyes at midday. Nothing on the island dulls that white: Anguilla is a low slab of reef limestone laid down some 20 million years ago, with no mountains and no rivers, and its porous ground soaks up the rain before it can run off. Even after a downpour there is no silt to cloud the water. The fringing reef, a few hundred metres out, breaks the Atlantic swell before it reaches the beach, so the shallows stay flat and glassy over pale sand — a turquoise band that turns cobalt where the coral drops away. Halfway along, the shoreline swings ninety degrees at a corner islanders call the bend, dividing Lower Shoal Bay, which carries the bars and most of the people, from the emptier Upper end. You can wade waist-deep a long way out before the floor shelves down. Where the sand finally runs out, the reef comes within swimming distance: brain corals in about three metres of water, parrotfish and surgeonfish working the tops, eagle rays crossing the bare sand between the heads. All of it lies inside one of Anguilla's marine parks, so nothing is taken from it. The beach bars are family places on the sand, not resort towers — Uncle Ernie's has been grilling here since 1984, when Shoal Bay had no electricity at all. The sand is less permanent than it looks: Hurricane Irma stripped the beach and its dune back in September 2017, and the sea returned most of it within months. Summer brings the newer nuisance, rafts of sargassum weed that land on this northeast-facing shore — thick some years, barely there in others.

Worth knowing

Good to know

A summer trip needs a sargassum check — the weed's landings on this shore swing from nothing to knee-deep week by week, and the June-to-November hurricane season can shut the island down for days.
Walk past the bend for space — Lower Shoal Bay holds the bars, the loungers and nearly everybody, while the Upper stretch beyond the corner is the same sand with a fraction of the people.
Start snorkelling from the far end of the beach, where the sand runs out and the reef swings in close. From the bar strip it is a long paddle over empty sand.
A winter north swell can turn the reef flat rough — the coral lies barely three metres down, so look hard at the water before you swim out over it.
Hawksbill and green turtles still nest on this sand — report fresh tracks or a dug pit to the Anguilla National Trust, and keep torches off the beach after dark.

Things to do

1
Swim the flat water inside the reef
The reef takes the swell a few hundred metres out, so the water inside it stays shallow, warm and almost still. You can wade far from shore and still stand, while the pale coral floor throws the light back up through the water.
2
Trace the reef lines from the plane window
The hop over from Sint Maarten is short and low, and the whole island unrolls beneath the wing: white bays, dark coral heads, and the pale shelf where the reef holds the deep blue off the sand. It is the clearest way to see how thin and flat Anguilla really is.
3
Snorkel the coral heads where the sand ends
At the far end of the beach the reef comes close enough to reach with fins and a mask. Brain corals sit in about three metres of water with parrotfish and surgeonfish over the tops, and eagle rays cross the open sand between the heads. It turns choppy whenever an Atlantic swell rolls in.
4
Walk the two miles round the bend
From the bar strip the sand runs on for two miles and swings ninety degrees at the corner islanders call the bend. Round it and the loungers, the music and most of the people are behind you, with the same coral sand and the same colour ahead.
5
Eat ribs on the sand at a shack bar
Grilled ribs, crayfish and rum punch come out of wooden bars standing directly on the beach, a few steps from where you were swimming. Sunday is the loud one, when live reggae plays and the crowd is as much local as visitor.