Barbuda

Barbuda lies roughly 50 km north of Antigua, a flat limestone island barely rising above sea level, ringed by some of the most undeveloped coastline in the eastern Caribbean. The entire western coast is one long curving beach — Coco Point in the south, running north to Low Bay and beyond — where the sand has a distinctive pink tint from the pulverised coral and shell that composes it. The island has a single main settlement, Codrington, built on the edge of the Codrington Lagoon, a large sheltered body of water separated from the Caribbean by a narrow barrier beach. The Lagoon holds the Frigate Bird Sanctuary, one of the largest frigate bird colonies in the western hemisphere, numbering several thousand birds in nesting season from September through April. The island was severely damaged by Hurricane Irma in September 2017 and the recovery has been slow; infrastructure remains more limited than pre-storm. The reef system surrounding Barbuda is largely intact — the combination of the island's low population and the shallow surrounding waters has kept the coral in better condition than many comparable Caribbean sites. The tidal exposure on the Atlantic northeast coast is noticeably more energetic than the sheltered Codrington Lagoon side; spring range approaches 0.5 to 0.7 metres on the Atlantic-facing beach. Tide predictions for Barbuda come from Open-Meteo Marine gridded model — accuracy within plus or minus 45 minutes on timing and 0.2 to 0.3 metres on height.