Sandy Island is an island in

Anguilla Anguilla is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Sa ...

, a

British Overseas Territory The British Overseas Territories (BOTs) or alternatively referred to as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are the fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom that, ...

, and is part of the

Lesser Antilles The Lesser Antilles is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea, forming part of the West Indies in Caribbean, Caribbean region of the Americas. They are distinguished from the larger islands of the Greater Antilles to the west. They form an arc w ...

in the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, located south of the Gulf of Mexico and southwest of the Sargasso Sea. It is bounded by the Greater Antilles to the north from Cuba ...

. Sandy Island is a small island on which a local restaurant is located. From Sandy Ground, it can be reached in 15 minutes, and the owner of the restaurant provides free boat crossing. The island is small (ca. 250x75 meters), consisting of round white sands with a little vegetation in the middle, including shrubs and palm trees. The island is popular with tourists for the richness of its seabed and its beach of fine sand and coral, as well as for the presence of a well known bar/restaurant in the area. In 1995, the island was submerged by

Hurricane Luis Hurricane Luis was a long lived and powerful tropical cyclone that was the strongest hurricane to make landfall and the third-most intense hurricane recorded during the 1995 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm, along with Humberto, Iris, and ...

for some days, while the facilities were severely damaged by the passage of the next several tropical cyclones and, during one of these storms, vessel went aground on the island. The buildings were rebuilt later. Even the flora was damaged by tropical storms, the palm trees and shrubs were uprooted by strong winds giving the island an aspect even more barren, almost without vegetation. The restaurant was re-built in 2007, however in 2017,

Hurricane Irma Hurricane Irma was an extremely powerful and devastating tropical cyclone that was the first Category 5 hurricane to strike the Leeward Islands on record, followed by Hurricane Maria, Maria two weeks later. At the time, it was considered ...

destroyed the buildings and vegetation, leaving a bare sand bar.Sandy Island Anguilla
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References

{{Reflist Islands of Anguilla