Fred, Cindy, Jill, Hideko and I rented a car today and circumnavigated Saint Barts. As you drive up the hill toward the air port your get to an area with nice shopping some resorts on the coast (sushi on the beach anyone?) and some great eateries.

As you continue on north you get into a more sparse setting with a lot of natural beauty. Many parts of Saint Barts are still not accessible by road. Anse De Colombier is one of those places and looks like a great anchorage largely for that reason.

The Atlantic side of Saint Barts has beautiful beaches and lots of rough rocky coastline as well. We stopped at two beaches and both were fantastic. My personal favorite was Anse de Grande Saline. As the name implies there is a large salt pond inland of the beach where you park the car. It is stinky. Once you get to the beach though all ill aromas are forgotten. This has to be one of the top ten beaches in the Carib. We spent a good part of the day swimming and playing in the waves. The sand is perfect and the bottom is pure sand so you don't have to worry about slicing your feet up or squashing marine life.

A great day only slightly overshadowed by the fact that tomorrow we would sail away.

When we returned to the boat we noticed that the quay was getting packed. There were four or five mega yachts in residence now. The harbor staff work in the office right where we're tied up and it is funny to hear their shtick. "You can tie up along side for now but we may have you come stern to if more boats arrive." They told us that every day we were there. They did ask Kelp Fiction to move onto the moorings in the parking lot 100 feet away this morning so that a boat could come in to get water but other than that things are pretty slow off season.

It must be amazing at Christmas time when the place is packed with 120 footers stern to one after another and the outer harbor has boats anchored half way to Saint Martin. I think I'll watch the video.