05/20/2009

Left St. Kitts Wednesday morning, made it about half way down Montserrat to anchor overnight.

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05/18/2009

We did not go straight to Guadeloupe. We left the marina in St. Maarten via the Simpson Bay Bridge (fixed opening times) at 9:30 Sunday morning. As soon as we were out in the open, we got the main and mizzen sails set, and when we let the jib out, it heeled us so much that it put our rail in the water. That's what the racing boats want, but we're not racing! In came the jib. About 3 PM, having traveled maybe thirty miles on the Atlantic side in water that was still quite rough, Michelle decided that twenty more hours of that were just not happening. We were some ten to twelve miles northeast of St. Kitts and Nevis, and the next island after that could only be Montserrat, another 60 miles away (ten to twelve hours - middle of the night), so we changed course and headed for the north side of St. Kitts, then passed between St. Eustatius and St. Kitts and followed the western (lee) shore of St. Kitts down to Basseterre, the capital of the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis. We made it into the anchorage about 8 PM.

After reading more about the island in our cruising guide, we decided we were not going to leave Monday morning, since it has several historic sites (unlike St. Maarten). We moved into the Port Zante Marina Monday morning, cleared customs, and took a taxi tour around the whole island, stopping at the botanical gardens in the tropical rain forest, a huge and recently renovated fort at the top of 800-foot Brimstone Hill, and several other scenic views along the coast road. One of the not-so-nice stops was Bloody Point, site of the massacre of some 2000 native Carib people in 1626, a joint venture between the French and British colonists sharing the island, after they were informed by a recently-arrived Arawak slave-wife that the natives were becoming uncomfortable with the ever increasing number of foreigners and were plotting with tribes from neighboring islands to ambush them. A very familiar story all over, including the good old USA. The fact that somebody else was there first doesn't mean a thing. People take what they want. Anyway, Britain owned St. Kitts and Nevis until 1983, when they were granted independence.

Our cruising guide has broken the Leeward Islands into three different classifications. This one is part of the "islands that brush the clouds." The tops of the mountains stay shrouded in clouds. We're very glad we stopped here.

It looks like we will stay through Tuesday and resume our journey Wednesday. We probably will not try to go straight to Guadeloupe then either, but stop at Montserrat at least for the night to break it up.

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05/16/2009

The refrigeration has been running since Monday, requiring some adjustment to the motor and compressor alignment Tuesday. The temperatures are fine, but both boxes are taking significantly longer to run than they used to. We're hoping that will gradually work itself out, since it would more than double the time we have to run the generator to keep them happy. James has recovered nicely from his bug bites, with just a little bit of itching remaining.

We learned from the man who worked on our refrigeration system about a butterfly farm on the island. Friday afternoon we rented a car, finished up our provisioning, then spent some time Saturday visiting the butterfly farm and driving around the island to see some of the other areas mentioned in our cruising guide.

We are leaving St. Maarten Sunday morning (5/17), planning to go straight through to Guadeloupe and try to meet our friends on L'Aventura. There's some discussion about a tropical wave kicking up more squall activity and a north swell coming down from a storm somewhere near Bermuda, but that covers a broad area, and the general forecast still looks best for the next couple days. If we don't like what we find, we'll stop somewhere else along the way.

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