May 8-June 6
Left St. Barts at daybreak and had a very good run over to St. Kitts averaging 6 knots sailing by the time we arrived at the north end of the island. We got a good look at Saba and passed to the south of St. Eustatius going through the channel north of St. Kitts, eyeing what turned out to be a nasty squall running down the side of the mountain so we doused all the sails but the main for a motor sail down the leeward side of the island. Next trip up, we will stop at those two islands, hopefully. St. Kitts’ main feature is a steep mountain range on the north end of the island which is covered with a lush looking rainforest. The island’s leeward side boasts a commanding promontory, home of Ft. Brimstone which played a major role in the wars between the French and English. Agriculture has dominated the island but is in a flux with a growing tourism trade building on the cruise ship dock at Basseterre. We ran down the leeward coast and at 3 pm put into Baseteere at the new port lands marina at Port Zante another land reclamation scheme which looks like it will take years to complete.
This coast has a reputation for rolly anchorages, so we had planned to stay at this marina since leaving Luperon because our buddy boat Ticketoo wanted to visit the veterinary school with which he was associated for many years, turned out to be a good deal at 50 cents a foot with free water. Had a bit of a chase getting checked in first with customs but had to visit the police station three times before finding the immigration officer. In the town there are many good examples of colonial architecture including as the town center a miniature version of Piccadilly Circus. We spent two nights here and then moved over to Nevis anchoring at Charlestown, which has a very good restored old town. The two islands are now one country but Nevis does run with some autonomy and their joint history is full of historical discord, another English and French soap opera. While here I ran up and visited the Nelson museum which although small was packed with interesting exhibits Weighed anchor at 5:30 am and headed out for Montserrat via Redonda. This passage was rough and the wind was just off enough that we had to beat. We had decided to pass by Antigua because the prevailing winds make it hard to get there, but the direction it was blowing would have allowed us an easy sail there, but our papers had us cleared out for Guadeloupe, with us intending to yellow flag Montserrat for one night, so we didn’t want to deviate from the plan since Antigua’s officials have a reputation for surliness. At Montserrat we went to the north end of the island and anchored at Little Bay avoiding all the fishing boats but, not the music, which pounded at boom box decibels from the little restaurant on shore, after all it was Friday night. Anchoring here is very limited with a steep drop off and even more so since the volcanoes eruption closed down Plymouth and parts of old road bay. When we woke in the morning the boat was covered in ash. There didn’t seem any point in washing it off so we got under way heading south but staying out of the volcano’s exclusion zone around Plymouth. The town’s ruins looked very stark and harsh, with cloud cover hovering on the top of the volcano. We couldn’t make out if it was weather or ash. You have to wonder about people’s long term health with all this ash in the air. After rounding the southern end of the island we headed for Guadeloupe having a sunny, pleasant run. A few miles off shore the wind got all fluky and finally died, so we started up the engine and headed into Deshaies on the north-west coast arriving around two o’clock in the afternoon. Deshaies is a deep bay surrounded by tall hills and has a fishing village at its head. We intended only to stay a day or two but this place has become a favorite. It is protected, although windy, and deep with lots of room.
The village itself is very pleasant and a great place to tour the island from. There is a great little market and a very good bakery. Again it took us three days to get checked in but nobody seems to care, here or in any of the French islands. We did the Jardin botanical gardens here which were the best I have ever seen. Lots of exotic plants gathered from all over the world with macaws and flamingoes.
We also rented cars with a few other boats and went inland to the Carbet Waterfalls which are a two hour hike up into the mountains, the second falls at the top falling 350 feet. At the parking lot everyone was pointing at some waterfalls high up and off in the distance, but neglected to tell me that’s where we were going. If I had known I would have said, thanks but no thanks, and retired to the bar for the day since I’m no Indiana Jones and the rest of the group were all considerably younger. I should have guessed what was happening when a couple of them pulled out telescoping carbon shafted walking sticks. Well half way up (around the first rope ladder bridge) Deb and Chris (Ticketoo) begged off. Not wanting to show our age, Tony and I pushed on. The leaders of the hike were scrambling like mountain goats high on fresh air or something, so I decided tactics were needed to slow the group down and engaged the ladies in the group in an Oprah like dialogue on careers, hopes and the trip in general between raspy gulps of air. This seemed to do the trick slowing them down so Tony and I could keep up, slipping and sliding on what was now a muddy rainforest trail. Finally we reached the top and were rewarded with a stunning view of the island and a deep, cool pool at the bottom of the falls.
Not wasting any time I got into the pool immediately only to see Tony standing above looking at the me and the pool with his detached teutonic gaze. When I asked him if he was coming in to get a well deserved cool off, he replied no. When I asked him why all I got was a somber reply of “Liver Flukes”. When I asked, as I had to, I was told they were a fresh water parasite inhabiting island streams. I asked him why the hell he waited to tell me and he said he just thought off it watching me cool off. Great, nobody else had heard or seen any warnings on them, but being in veterinary sciences Tony’s opinion carried some weight so of course parasites were the subject of discussion all the way down. I would have liked to have reported that the trip down was easier than up, but no such luck, as footing was an issue all the way down. At the bottom I accosted the guides at the gates in broken French and English about the liver flukes but I’m sure they must have thought if all Canadians are like this, no wonder Quebec’s got problems. Anyways nobody had heard of them but, it turned out on further investigation they do exist, but in St. Lucia and only in streams below towns and villages. We stopped at a restaurant on the way back and had a great local meal before heading through the center of the island and back to Deshaies along the road which was full off switchbacks and cut into the sides of the mountainous coast offering quite the view.
We left Deshaies on Friday May 19th headed for the town of Basseterre(yes I know another one) by the anchorage did not look inviting and it was early so we sailed past the end of Guadelope and headed for the Saints. Again the passage between the islands was choppy but we pulled into the harbour at Bourge des Saintes mid afternoon. We found this harbour very deep with the depths in the 35-40 foot range so we moved around the corner to Marigot bay (I know another one) and settled in 9 feet, in a very protected and with only a ten minute walk to town.
We only stayed here three days but then had to drag ourselves away. We are running out of time with our insurance and by June first we are suppose to be south of 12 degrees north which is still ways south and a lot of islands to visit. Plus the fact that this will be or first experience anywhere near the hurricane belt and we don’t know how the weather works down here yet. Still we managed to get the feel of the place and took in the fort which is the best museum I have visited in the Lesser Antilles. They have a great display case of the Battle of the Saintes, which shows all the ships positions hour by hour (all three of them) in the great sea battle where admiral Rodney broke the French’s hold on this part of the Caribbean.
When we left we decided to go east around the islands to gain the wind advantage. It was pretty rough and a Tayana gave up and ran through the islands and out to the south. The old Alberg clawed and cut her way through though and we breezed across getting into Portsmouth on Dominica by lunch. The first boat boy (Albert) meant us at least 3 miles out but we told him we were going to try and make Rouseau since it was still early. Portsmith as the whole island does, has a reputation for boardings and petty theft though it is reportably better in recent years with the arrival of the cruise ships. Dominica is the most naturally impressive island you will see. It was also that last island ever to be settled by Europeans, as this is where the last of the Caribs made their stand. Every bit of their history makes for fascinating reading. These guys would think nothing of jumping into their canoes and heading up to Puerto Rico to raid the Spanish for goods and slaves. That’s the same apprehension filled trip we just took twenty four days to do in a fairly new, if vintage modern yacht. The terrain lends itself to guerrilla warfare and I couldn’t help but think of those English and French soldiers trying to move around in the heat in those old heavy uniforms and sweating to death. The leeward side of the island has winds that gust down out of nowhere one minute and then be gone the next. You constantly have to have the sheets ready to run or you find your toe rail totally buried. We turned the engine on in light airs but after ten minutes it gave up the ghost just as we were getting nailed with a gust. It took twenty minutes to get her fuel filter changed and lines bled but she fired up again proving to us that she might be old but durable. We figured we must have got bad fuel somewhere since its’ less than a hundred hours on this filter and we scrubbed our tank clean before we left Canada. We pulled into Rousseau by five and were hailed by Ticketoo and Bravo 2 who were both on mooring balls twenty feet offshore. This is the hardest island to anchor on being steep to, the entire coast. There is a shelf here and there but you really have to work at getting anchored and if you drag your rode will be hanging hundreds of feet down while you drift off to sea or worse. The mooring balls are all in the Anchorage Hotel area and are owned by either Pancho or Seacat who maintain a healthy competition. We took one of Pancho’s that was right behind his house on shore, which we figured would at least afford us some security with no one wanting to rob his customers. Again wanting to move on we only spent one full day here but did manage to visit Rousseau in the morning and get a guide to go up into the mountains visiting Trafalgar falls and then down to the fishing village at Scott’s Head which we would have to sail past on the way out. Here we saw some solid masonry houses roughly elevated twenty feet off the beach that had been totally destroyed by the storm surge from Lenny, again a grim reminder of the power of these storms. You could just make out Martinique in the distance. Our guide Jonesy also showed us where some filming was done for Pirates of the Caribbean and we visited a small farm plot with a mix of nutmeg, mangoes and other fruit. We had a great cockpit party that night on Bravo 2 with a few other boats and at five am slipped of our mooring ball and were the first ones out for the sail over to Martinique. We had wind over to Scott’s Head and then when we got off the end of the island things got interesting for about an hour. First the current was a challenge plus all the wind that was funneling and compressing around the end of the island. There was quite a build up of large short waves and we were forced to put out a little more sail than we wanted to power up the boat. On top of all this we had a fishing boat that’s only mission seemed to be to cut us off. No one was fishing and one guy was standing in the bow pounding through the waves holding his painter line like he was Napoleon. I actually was getting worried that they were up to mischief but the likelihood seemed remote with the seas that were running. Eventually they got bored and fell off and we had a real ride over to Martinique. We had just passed the northern end of the island when we hit the wind shadow and amazingly the sails went slack. Again on went the motor and we put in to St. Pierre home of the infamous volcano explosion that killed the entire town of twenty thousand except for one poor soul in the town jail who went on to work for Barnum and Bailey exhibiting his burns.
We checked into customs here after a brief search, turned out to be an internet café handled it for the government, was great got to drink beer while filling out the declarations. These French are on to something. St.Pierre was a nice little town, very quiet after Rouseau in Dominica. We did the museum which reminded us of Plymouth in the photos looking at the ruins. In fact the Montserrat volcano had gone off again while we were in the Saintes resulting in a small tsuami(we didn’t feel it) and cancelled airline flights between islands (as if anybody would notice, nothing runs on schedule and the main carrier LIAT stands for luggage in another terminal). Everything was shut down for another of the islands weekly holidays so we moved on to Marin the next day for a calmer anchorage. We had a great sail and saw some whales spouting off the entrance to the bay that leads to Fort Du France the regions largest city. We also saw Ticketoo heave to and thinking that they had caught a fish and that we were going to get a fish dinner out of the deal we called, only to learn that they had come across a turtle trapped and dead in a tangle of fishing nets.
We went to the south end of the island having a good sail, then turned east at Diamond Rock into the wind. Turned the engine on and ran into Marin another lagoon anchorage which was loaded with cruisers. Here we saw Interlude our friends Karen and Cheryl’s boat looking very good and resting on a mooring. This is the only place I have ever seen where you can walk up to a window and see marine diesel engines for sale. All major brands are available from Yanmar thru to Westerbeke, on the rack and ready to go. The bay is divided into a marina full of charter boats and a work yard area full of boats under going work with a very good anchorage for the rest of us. There were good ship chandleries and harbour side eateries and inter-net cafes with laundry near-by. We put the weekend in here and then moved to Rodney Bay lagoon in St. Lucia getting wet with a couple of quick squalls on the way over. Checking in here I disturbed the customs officials who were watching a soap opera on the tube. They more or less let me fill my form, took the money and cleared me through with out taking their eyes off the tube. Moved back out of the lagoon into the bay and spent the afternoon cleaning the hull. The next morning we moved down the coast to the north side of the Pitons to spend the night before heading over to St. Vincent in the morning. The Pitons are very tall and majestic but you are plagued by boat boys and venders. Here again the roll from the swell promised a sleepless night , so this time we did our first stern to shore tie off breaking out our new 300 foot rode that we had picked up at Sailorman in Ft .Lauderdale but never used. I swam it to shore and around a tree back to the boat, where it worked very well and we got to sleep, while everyone else complained of the roll. We were pretty vigilant here as some boats were boarded just the week before and the guides made a big issue about eating on shore where you can watch your boat. Around midnight a dog started to bark on shore so I moved into the cockpit for the night to sleep. The water around was bioluminescent which was matched by fireflies on shore. The next morning there was a light rain but the forecast the night before had sounded ok so we left at dawn all excited about getting to the Grenadines where we had sailed many times before on charter. We wanted to leave early to see if we could make it all the way down to Bequia where we would lay in for a while. Also it was May 31 and our insurance ran out the next day. The trouble with the Pitons is that you can’t see east from where you are anchored, just a sliver of horizon. The wind direction here is predominately east. Well we poked our head out past the southern end of the island into the usual funneling winds and currents and sure enough the sky was dark as far as we could see to the north-east and moving quickly to the east. It was too late to go back to the anchorage and it looked like we would just catch the end of it. Not so for the boats about two miles behind us, so we pushed on while Deb got the oilskins out. The worst of it was when it went over and got dark all around I figured I had miscalculated the direction and would have to run with it for a while but after about ten minutes and a hell of a wash down the sun reappeared and we had a quick run but in large seas over to St, Vincent where once again as soon as we hit the wind shadow of Mt. Soufriere the winds died and we turned on the engine for what we thought would be a quiet ride down to the Bequia channel. This was not to be and down near Wallibou (scene of the first Pirates of the Caribbean) the winds picked up veering around the southern tip of the island and again we found ourselves beating into it to get as far south and east before heading across the channel to Bequia. We got as far as Otley Hall when we decided we had had enough and headed across arriving at Admiralty Bay at 3 pm in the afternoon dropping the anchor off of Tony Gibbon beach in a small fleet of about one hundred boats. Being a good Canadian I went into customs at 4 pm sharp and was rewarded with a thirty-five EC dollar overtime charge for checking in late even though they are open till 6 pm. I should of just waited till morning to do it and there wouldn’t have been any overtime charge. We spent six days in Bequia recharging and getting the boat cleaned up from the last three weeks of travel. One more leg to Grenada and an overnight run to Trinidad and we could hole up for hurricane season.
To be continued…….
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