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February 1st - Anse de Colombier, St. Barts
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Joe and I both remember St. Barts as a favorite
destination from the three or four charters we took to
the Caribbean oh so many years ago. It has
certainly changed in the ten years or so since we were
last here. The mega yachts are everywhere.
The harbor is larger and fancier with many more high-end
stores and restaurants than we remember. Coming
from a week in St. Kitts and Nevis, the contrast is
startling.
Aunt Kim's visit was a resounding success. We met
her in Basseterre, St. Kitts on the 25th after a
spirited, 15 hour sail north from Guadeloupe. I
was a little nervous about how we were going to find
each other, me without a cell phone and her without a
VHF radio. I had told her that I would meet her at
the cruise ship dock and hoped that where I chose to
wait and where the taxi dropped her would be in the same
general vicinity.
We
had decided to get a slip at the new Port Zante marina
right next door to the cruise ship dock. As has
become our custom, we spent the day giving the boat a
good cleaning from top to bottom before our visitor's
arrival. The next problem was staying up until
9:30pm! Scratch that, a message on the satellite
phone lets us know that she will be an hour late
arriving. Forget trying to stay up. I set an
alarm on my watch for 10:15pm and snoozed on the couch.
I could claim that the sailing trip the night before had
worn me out, but the truth is our bed time often
falls well before 10pm. Much to my relief, her
taxi pulled right up to me where I stood waiting under
the street light.
We
hit town the next morning for breakfast.
Basseterre has a small downtown section which caters to
the tourists. The beach front is not especially
pretty, but the water is clean which is a huge plus
after coming from Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe. I
got the impression that the city was a lot older than
the tourist trade and the retro-fitting to make it more
attractive was not quite complete. St. Kitts and
Nevis are an independent Caribbean nation and therefore
don't enjoy some of the benefits of having a wealthier
motherland to look out for them. French
vacationers flock to St. Barts, St. Martin, Guadeloupe
and Martinique, whereas St. Kitts and Nevis are on their
own to attract the tourists and their money which does
so much for their local economy. The new marina is
one such effort being undertaken by the local government
and I'm sure that ten years from now, Basseterre will
have changed as much as St. Barts seems to have in the
preceding ten.
Enough "big city" action for Aunt Kim. We want to
show her the more peaceful side of cruising so after we
got school out of the way (definitely not the peaceful
side of cruising!), we made our way a few miles
southeast to a secluded cove that, for the very first
time in our cruising life, we had entirely to ourselves.
Although the beach was rocky, the water was pristine.
Lovely green hillsides surrounded the cove and on the
other side of a small beach, a salt pond added to the
ambiance. We enjoyed the serenity of the scene and
the girls got to spend some time getting reacquainted
with their Aunt from Chicago. We shared a
beautiful sunset, although the girls were again
disappointed as the "green flash" continues to elude us.
As
we were on a roll with school in January, we kept it up
and knocked off another day before setting out for
Nevis. We were disappointed to have to go through
the customs routine, despite the two islands being part
of the same nation. We anchored off Pinney's Beach
and were surprised by a visit from another Caribbean
1500 boat, Elsha. Lloyd is a native of Santa Fe,
and I just happened to be cooking up tacos for dinner in
honor of all the flour tortillas Kim and brought down
for us, so we added a couple of extra plates to the
buffet and enjoyed an evening of boat talk and visiting
with our temporary neighbors. I'm afraid the boat
talk part of it bored my sister to death, and Ashley
stole the attentions of her nieces for an hour or so,
but it was an enjoyable evening for all.
Wind and rain greeted us the next morning - bummer.
This was definitely not what Aunt Kim had ordered up for
her brief four day visit. Making the most of it,
we dinghied into Sunshine's, a popular beach BBQ joint,
for lunch and would make a plan from there.
Landing the dingy in the swell is always an exciting
undertaking, but luckily Joe and I have had some
practice at it so we didn't traumatize Kimberly too much
on her first dinghy ride with us. We wound up
making friends with one of the guys who "helps out"
around Sunshine's. We sat and talked, drinking the
signature "killer bee" rum drinks and getting to know
our new friend, Lakey. Actually, he introduced
himself as Kicksand. We finally asked what his
real name was, which he reluctantly shared, Leroy, but
everyone goes by their nicknames. Kicksand, aka
Leroy, aka Lakey, was the youngest of 17 siblings, 12 of
whom survived. He was a breach baby, and in the
third world in 1961 that meant either saving the baby or
the mother. Luckily for the Powell family, Dr.
Lake decided to save them both. Hence his second
nickname, Lakey, which is what most people, including
his wife, Carla, call him.
Lakey is a Kittitian by birth (a native of St. Kitts)
and met Carla, who is Canadian, while she was
vacationing in Nevis many years ago. She wound up
coming back numerous times and eventually marrying Lakey.
They lived in Canada until moving back to Nevis two and
a half years ago. Carla is in the publishing
business and works from her lovely house on the hillside
overlooking the eastern coast of Nevis. They
graciously invited us to brunch the next day; an
invitation we eagerly accepted. We were thrilled
to get something more than the standard tourist beach
bar view or taxi driver rendition of the island.
Their house was built by one of the many foreigners who
own land on Nevis. You can always tell them apart
from the locals' homes because they are set back from
the road and the porch faces the view rather than the
street. It is far more important to the local Nevitian
to keep track of the comings and goings in the
neighborhood than enjoy the solitude of their beautiful
surroundings. I suppose we all come to take the
things we experience every day for granted, and this is
just another example of how that manifests itself.
Lakey told us about his experiences buying the property.
As a native, he pays a much lower tax rate on the real
estate transaction. In addition, he soon
discovered that the previous owners had been paying the
"white rate" on everything from their property taxes to
their water bill. Whereas the real estate tax
differences are common knowledge, the officials wanted
to be sure that the word of the different rates on other
things didn't get back to the previous owners. Who
can blame them?
We
had a deadline to get back to St. Kitts where Kim had an
early morning flight the next day. We said our
good-byes and thank yous to our new friends, did the
customs and immigration check-out, raised the main and
hoisted the anchor, and set sail back to Basseterre.
We had put two reefs in the main as we raised it, since
squalls continued to blow through the area. We
unrolled the gib and took off through the big swell for
the one hour sail back. As the wind instruments
registered gusts into the mid 30s, we quickly decided we
had too much sail out and rolled up the genoa and
unfurled the staysail. Much better. The big
winds and seas had not let up quite as much as our
friend Chris Parker had promised, but it was a short
trip and no one complained. I wish I could say the
same about our meal that night at PJs. The food
was awful and it was expensive and we all felt ripped
off. Just goes to show that you can't always trust
the recommendations in the cruising guide, which often
sells ads to the same establishments they recommend.
School, laundry, internet cafe, and a trip to the
grocery store filled our day on Monday, and we planned
our departure for St. Barts after school the following
day. Conditions were still quite lively at first,
but the wind mellowed out and we had a wonderful, sun
filled sail. The kids watched a movie, the first
one in quite a while, while Joe fiddled with the sails.
As much as I hated to read Kim's
characterization of me as the "bathing beauty," I
have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed a few hours of
said activity on the sail up. To top it off, I
opted out of the trip to shore for dinner and
administered a haircut and color to myself while Joe
took the kids to Cheeseburger in Paradise. It is
my third attempt at giving myself a haircut and I think
it gets a little better each time. One would think
that I could find a great haircut in the swanky French
town of Gustavia, but cruising is all about
self-sufficiency, and I take it to its extremes.
I
didn't have my update done in time to post it this
morning when we went into Gustavia for breakfast and
groceries, but I did manage to post a bunch of photos
from January when I posted Aunt
Kim's update from the 28th. I'll add more
pictures from her visit the next time I get the chance.
I also want to add a page for Joe's articles that he has
been writing for our local Annapolis sailing rag,
Spinsheet. Look for a new menu item for that in
the next few days. We are in a small little bay
with no civilization around so I'll have to post this
one via satellite phone, and the bandwidth just doesn't
support the photos. It barely even supports my
long-winded entries. Lastly, if you happen to see
the February 2006 issue of Blue Water Sailing, there is
a big write up about the Caribbean 1500 and a small
blurb on Zia and her crew.
Happy February, everyone. Once you get through
this month, spring is right around the corner!
Love,
Christy, Joe, Cassie, and Juliana
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Many thanks to our
friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up
the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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