Time to Go

          Where I left off on the last chapter, Dad and I were sitting at a lovely beachside restaurant, beside a marina, having burgers on their porch. We were trying to check out of customs at Phillipsburg, St. Martin, but.. the customs officials just weren’t around to give us that exit clearance stamp. We got there around 11, tough to get an early start when you wake up after a stormy night, hard to sleep through, then discover the boat is leaking from the floor… After finally getting our act together, but without discovering the cause of the leak, we had to ride in the dinghy a very long way to the beach in front of town. Lock up the dinghy to a palm tree, and ward off a few friendly hustlers. Then we walk through the blazing sun, beside the dazzling turquoise water and rugged desert cliffs, around the industrial area of this town and through the cruise ship port- to customs.   

          So we waited for the customs officials for an hour. After that they were supposed to close for an hour for lunch. Oh well, lets go get lunch as well, and come back later I guess. We definitely had other plans for today, but this seems to be a trend that checking into or out of customs tends to take all day. So we sat and had burgers, feeling a little stressed and uncertain but just going with the flow of the Spirit like we always do! And a little voice was telling us something… Dad eventually had the idea and said, “Hey let’s not leave tomorrow, take one extra day here.” I said, “Great idea.”

          Although we still had to tell customs we were leaving tomorrow, that’s fine. When we went back at 2PM, we waited for the better part of another hour for them to show up. Stamp. Onto our next destination, which we told them would be Dominica.

          When we got back to the boat, I discovered that the leak was simply coming from the melting ice in the fridge! (My fridge doesn’t work, it just serves as an icebox.) The water was seeping through somewhere and finding it’s way out of a crack in the floor. Hurray! We’re not sinking! All is just fine.

          So that evening it came to me… Hey… Instead of just staying here and relaxing tomorrow, lets take a test sail! See if we tuned our shrouds up properly. We can sail just 20 miles eastbound to the neighboring island of St. Bart’s. If we do that… well it’s always good to make easting. (That’s where the Tradewinds always blow from, and it’s always good to get further upwind of your destination).

         We had planned to sail 65 miles or so, when we left St. Martin. We would pass by the island of Statia, and were hoping to make landfall on the southern end of the island of St. Kitts. Just to spend one night there and then keep on going.

          So we hadn’t originally planned to go to St. Bart’s. We would have just left St. Martin to get to St. Kitts. Doing it this way will shorten the St. Kitts sail by 20 miles! Why not break up the trip, take that extra day we made for ourselves for just a short sail and test of the new rigging. And spend one night in St. Bart’s. We both agreed this sounded like a good idea!

          So in the morning, the day was beautiful. The weather looked great, sunny and the wind wasn’t too too strong. Just regular strong, as usual. We pulled the anchor, and headed for the sea, a mile out of the bay behind us and there was nothing left but open ocean. Except for St. Bart’s 20 miles away, that didn’t look too far!

          The waves grew huge, they often do as you sail around a landmass, a cape at the end of a mountainous island. The wind was blowing 20 knots and steady. We got the sails up, one reef in the main, jib sail out full. And we crashed through the waves on our course of about 130 degrees. The sails were tightly sheeted in. Couldn’t sail directly to St. Bart’s, since it was too close to where the wind was blowing from, but I aimed ourselves to land near enough to the place.

          Before long we took a reef in the jib too, to make the sail smaller and handle the strong wind. That worked like a charm and put us in better control. The new rigging was pulling tight, under thousands of pounds of stress, and it was doing it’s job perfectly. We sliced through the waves with crashing spray flying, washing over us from time to time, and washing over the deck. Everything becomes so soaked and salty, and we could tell water was getting into the boat…  (There was no leak in the floor, but there were definitely still leaks from the sides of the boat when waves would crash over us.)

          But as the day went by the wind got weaker, and we had a beautiful sail. It was only a 4 hour sail, we made a tack when we found ourselves offshore of St. Bart’s to start heading directly in. I checked out some rugged rock islands off the coast that were pretty cool. Ile Fourtue, it had five small, rocky mountain peaks, untouched by civilization, encircling an isolated bay. Looks like a place I would love to sail to someday. Something about it felt like a sacred place, all the rock formations that rise from the ocean seem to have that feel. Some of them have a human face profile of some sort, usually they have a strong personality too! They are unconquerable in their pure ruggedness.       

          Entering St. Bart’s a pyramid of stone rises from the depths to guide you in. Three more rock towers like it stand at the entrance to Gustavia Harbor. It’s a French island and we could see all the quaint red roofs of the seaside town, built into the hills. The island is small, and it’s pointy peaks are very dramatic. Like a little crusty slice of earth, it’s dry plants shaded green from the recent rains, elegantly carving though the sea. Providing a great spot to anchor in a boat!

 

          There were many boats in front of the town, and out into the calm water of the outer bay. We anchored right at the end of the vast neighborhood of boats, right beside the three massive rocks. Wish we had time to dive them, unfortunately we didn’t have that kind of free time! We did dive in to set the anchor in the deep water. But then we had to deal with the leaks.

           Dad had bought some caulk, and he went to work caulking them for me! I appreciated that! Meanwhile, I took everything out of the storage space on the boat. My bed had gotten wet, as well as a bunch of stuff shoved into the starboard quarter-berth that I call “The Horde”. It includes our massive life raft. All that stuff was wet, and the cushion they were resting on, as well as the “navigation center” which had our inverter to charge our phones and stuff. Also the batteries and solar converter which are in a cabinet underneath that cushion. The water had gotten so throughout that it even got our food stores wet.

          So I took everything out and went full on gypsy mode, hanging everything out, our carpets, our bedding, the cushions. I put everything that was wet out in the blazing sun, and had it dry within the hour. Then put everything back together and Dad finished the caulking job. (Later we’d find out that the caulking job worked great! It would still leak a little bit, but much much less than it had been.)

          Time to… explore!

          We rode in the dinghy a long way into the late afternoon sun which made the adorable little gingerbread city glow in the golden light. The water we passed through was crystal clear, calm and azure blue. What a gorgeous place…

          We found a place to tie up our dinghy on concrete wharfs. The town was quiet. I had heard this place was a very (*very*) wealthy island. Maybe known to be the fanciest and most expensive of all the Caribbean islands. And it sure was! First off I noticed, I only saw white people. That was extremely different from anywhere else in the Caribbean I’d been, in most parts you see only black people, and in places like St. Martin or St. Thomas it’s a mix of everyone. Here it seemed like a suburb of Paris. But then I noticed that it wasn’t just Parisians walking around, they had people speaking all different European languages, I heard some British accents, etc. What the people seemed to have in common was that they all had very nice looking skin, and they smelled like perfume, they wore fine clothes.

          I saw lots of young people, and noticed lots of very good looking people. “The Beautiful People” I started to call them! They were sitting in cafes, many people smoking in the posh and polished restaurants. Wow I think this place is VERY wealthy, this is like some world renowned, exclusive destination, that people of average means never find their way to. It felt almost like a secret society… Young people with lives of leisure, well fed, well groomed, partying here in paradise. And the island was very clean, the nature unspoiled and on lavish display.

          Dad and I walked the waterfront, having just a great time in such a fine and foreign place! We passed extremely fancy restaurants, and Dad noticed how the town had grown and developed since he had visited on a sailboat 20 years ago. We went to find pizza, a pizza place he had eaten at that was supposed to be great and a cheaper option. Well that was gone and replaced with a “gourmet” fancy pizza place. We ate there! The pizza had Italian “bacon” on it, but it was just like the bacon fat. “Gizzley” bacon, we called it! It was clear and soft like cheese. Gross! Haha, it was okay, these “delicacies” are always a little odd! And they charged 60 Euros for a pizza, but somehow we got a discount. Maybe because we made such good friends with the waiter, a super cool guy from Italy, and we chatted with him for a very long time.

          Anyway, that night on the boat we had a good ground swell rolling us around, but we were used to the rolling by now. We had a decent weather forecast, maybe not perfect, but hopefully it would work out. We were excited for the next day’s sail.

          We woke in the morning and headed out, for St. Kitts! In fact we changed our mind about where we wanted to make it to today, always good to be flexible and try and figure out the best plan. I had never been to these places before, so I had no local knowledge whatsoever about where is best to anchor. Where is the calmest, the most convenient, and of course, the safest to not be caught by any sort of customs patrol… Because we weren’t checked in to St. Bart’s/ France, and we would not be checking in to the independent island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Just passing through, we ought not even set foot on shore…

          But today we would try to make it to Nevis. Piney Bay, or Charlestown on Nevis, anchoring on St. Kitts would actually be out of the way. But Nevis was ten miles further. That would shorten the following day’s sail by ten miles so all good. Since we checked off 20 miles into the wind by coming to St. Bart’s, we could now probably make that 55 miles to Nevis.

          Also by coming to windward it made the crossing of the St. Bart’s Channel a bit easier. We had to clear 40 miles of open ocean before we’d hit St. Kitts. Now we had a better angle on the wind.

          When we pulled out the sails, the breeze was fresh, the morning sunny and free of squall clouds, and we screamed across the rolling waves of the passage for many hours. It was comfortable, it was better than beating into the wind. Not getting splashed as much like this.

           In the distance the islands came Into view. The Leeward Islands, this area is fascinating… They feel like a separate group of their own here. It’s a chain of volcanoes, isolated from the rest of the Caribbean, and they lay in a perfectly straight row. The cones of the volcanoes rise from the ocean to wondrous heights, very symmetrical, and the land of the islands they created is chopped, grandiose and strange. In my mind this group starts in the south with the island of Montserrat, then the chain heading north consists of Nevis, St. Kitts, Statia, and Saba. Each is 20 or 30 miles apart from the next, and each has a volcano.

          St. Kitts has a small mountain range surrounding the volcano, and is the largest island of the chain, with the largest town, “Basseterre.” It is an independent country as well, with a culture started from sugar cane plantations and slavery, and it is deeply rooted in the Rastafari way of life. I don’t know much about St. Kitts and Nevis, but I get an impression that it is a poor country, and Basseterre is probably a sketchy city. I even wondered if it is the extreme opposite of St. Bart’s, 40 miles to the north… Well we’d be avoiding Basseterre at any rate. Interestingly though, neighboring Statia and Saba islands belong to the Netherlands, and Montserrat belongs to France. I kind of wonder if all the islands in this mysterious volcanic chain should belong to the people of St. Kitts and Nevis…

           As St. Kitts and Statia became clearer in our view, we headed for the gap between them. And we watched as the volcanic hump of mountains on St. Kitts gathered more and more impressive cumulous clouds. Then the sky darkened and grey black streamers of rain were soon dousing the island. And before we knew it all the sky to the east was a black line of squall clouds. Unavoidable.

          They slammed us with incredible force! I decided to loosen the sheets, let the sails out and run with the storm. Probably not the best course of action, and at some point later I tried instead tightening the sheets and beating into the storm. No really fantastic options here, you just have to brace yourself against the driving wind and rain and it will pass in 5 minutes or so. But we were flying along so fast, maybe 10 knots, and the waves grew absolutely enormous, curling and confused. By the time the big squall passed we had been taken two degrees off course and much closer to Statia! No matter though, we still had a great point of sail. We closed the gap.

          Often times the currents get strange in places like this. Sometimes the waves get huge. The islands had been getting closer and closer, the perfect cone of Statia’s volcano “The Quill,” to starboard, and the highest point of St. Kitts to port. The clouds were pouring from St. Kitts like a massive eruption, trailing off into the sky. And verdant forest was blanketing the slopes, down to the coast where lime green fields from idyllic farms patched the landscape. Pretty soon we were in the passage between the two islands, where another squall hit us, sending up angry chop. This one blacked out The Quill completely from view for a few minutes, behind the intense rain.

          I mused at how good it was that we spontaneously chose to go to St. Bart’s yesterday! It really made our sail much much easier today and faster, by getting that leg up on the wind before trying to cross this body of open water. Another squall hit us. The sky, with massive clouds of all different shades of blue and grey and white was like a vast painting all around us.

           The wind piped up even more as we headed for the backside of St. Kitts. Perhaps a cape effect, the winds were wrapping around the mountain and strengthening. I was getting exhausted after 40 miles of this extreme and fast sailing. I was looking forward to getting behind St. Kitts, where we were hoping the wind would die in the lee of the island. Eventually we made it there and the wind suddenly quieted as though we hit an invisible wall. Then everything was calm, finally, and the stress melted away. Another squall hit, but just with a very light amount of wind, and we sat there letting the rain wash the salt off us.

          Now we had to turn eastward to head toward Nevis, and unfortunately that was more of a beat into the wind. We slowly, slowly passed behind all the impressive, green mountains of St. Kitts, and then the island started to fall farther away from us, and before we knew it we were back out at sea. Way off to our port side was the city of Basseterre, and the low lying peninsula that makes up the end of St. Kitts. Now without the protection of those mountains, the wind returned. Dead in front of us was the massive, perfectly cone shaped peak of Nevis. It is just one volcano, absolutely enormous, rising up from the sea to create a perfectly circular island with flat lands all around the base of the volcano.

           Well there must have been a strange current or something, and we were definitely fighting against it. The waves here were small and mean, and we were sailing hard, but painfully slow, right into the wind. For the last 20 miles of the day. We were started to feel very fatigued as the sun grew lower and lower, and the beautiful volcano grew closer. It was such a long, exhausting day, and so beautiful the whole time. The boat was heeled over hard, and we were getting constantly splashed, but at some point we had ten miles left, and we began a countdown, 9 miles…… 8 miles…. Getting closer to our destination.

          We arrived to Nevis right as the sun was dipping into the ocean, under a few puffy sunset clouds leftover from the day. We knew they had a rule that no anchoring was permitted on the coast of Nevis, so we’d have to grab a mooring. It was tricky to find one in the gathering dusk, there were many around here in the open and completely calm bay in front of the town of Charlestown. So eventually we picked a big old derelict one that looked like it was for some government agaency, said “NPA” on it. And very soon after we grabbed it the darkness consumed us.

          I was very glad we had chosen to come to St. Bart’s the day before, because now I realized with how difficult this sail was, that we would have not had nearly as successful a day if we had tried any other sailing plans! We definitely would have arrived here in the dark, and it would have been real tricky to find this mooring we were on. So everything always seems to work out perfectly.

          Now we would sleep peacefully, in the sill water at the foot of this volcano. We could hear reggae music playing from the town, sounds of traffic and bustling life. But we wouldn’t be exploring this place… Our weather window is on us, the sailing is good. Tomorrow the ocean will still be good, and we’ll keep going, our next destination is Montserrat.