2017 The Summer Season

February 9^th 2017

06.00 left Anse de Arlet for Portsmouth, Dominica. Saw 2 Whales spouting around 2 o’clock.

Engine off and anchored by 17.41 p.m. Anchorage very crowded we had a calm and peaceful night, although one flying fish was on deck in the morning and there had been showers to wash the salt from the decks.

After checking in we took part in various activities including watching the pre-Carnival parade in town.Sunday was the start of Carnival. We sauntered into town and watched the celebrations go by. As usual there was a fairly long wait and plenty of opportunity to buy street food and drinks.

The crowd was in party mood and all was right with the world. We also booked for the Boiling Lake Hike later in the week.

Boiling Lake Hike.

I started off with good intentions but after I hit my personal ‘wall’ I decided that I’d had enough. However I did see the Valley Of Desolation and Malcolm shared his snaps of the Boiling Lake with me on Facebook. Peter even made a U-tube video of the trip. The hike back from the Valley of Desolation was sufficient to finish me I never want to see another walkway made of tree trunks. I was in no mood to do anything for the next two days! Even Malcolm said it was a tough one!

Here are some snaps.

The week ended with another meal and speeches Dominican Style , Coconut curry, fish stew, salad and cole slaw. With over 100 participants there was plenty of noise and humour, we were all made ambassadors for the next year so that the week would hopefully be even better attended.

19^th February,08.55 set sail for Point a Pitre, Guadeloupe. This was another fast ( 6.1 knots average) and comfortable sail arriving 15.52 pm in time for sundowners. The next day we toured the main town : 

22^nd February, we motored round to Gosier (20 minutes) and had a few days snorkelling and enjoying the town life of a typical French resort. This included a very nice steak at the local steakhouse.

Saturday 25^th February, with a full rig we sailed from Gosier to Pigeon Island, an old favourite of ours. By 15.00 we were anchored in Malendure ready for Tea! The anchorage was almost empty but quite rolly. We took advantage of this opportunity to dive the reserve and check out a sea full of tropical fish just off the underwater cliff. Malcolm also used the last of the tank to clean the prop and new anti fouling wire which were quite thick with growth

Thursday, 2^nd March, we motor-sailed with just the staysail for a 2 hour trip to Deshaies, we picked up a buoy inshore and went shopping for croissants and veg then to check out.

Friday, 3^rd March we sailed for Jolly Harbour starting at 06.30, lunch aboard while underway - a quiche I’d knocked up the day before and fresh salad. This was another cracking sail (taking just 5 hours at 7 knots) already there were our friends on S/Y C- Drifters, and S/Y Quicksilver. Saturday we motored round to Hermitage Bay for the wifi! But it was quite windy and we all thought to move upwind (so a shorter fetch) across the bay to the shelter of Mardai Island.

Monday, 10^th March we checked out of Antigua and by late afternoon we sailed for St Martin. Dare I say again another fast sail- we could have been in St Barths in 11 hours! We arrived just in time for Mikes morning net and announced our arrival. While here we did a massive shop on the new Island Water-world shopping bus and stocked up with lots of goodies including a few drinks in preparation for the arrival or our visitor.

Wednesday,22nd March back to Jolly Harbour on an overnight sail arriving for breakfast the following morning. We took a buoy in the marina entrance channel so that we could pick up Maria easily. She arrived four days later and we immediately allowed her to unpack and stow her gear.

29^th March we sailed for Falmouth Harbour and anchored in 3m of water. A wind sift during the night had swung us towards shore and the following morning we were touching the bottom. Neat that we could kedge off and re-anchor in a safer 4m. Maria was quite happy having a beach to swim from and a BBQ with friends. Note the use of the new Cobb!

Saturday 1^st of April after putting Maria on our crew list we checked out of Antigua and took Maria to St Barths. Full sails and we even got the MPG set.

Maria was impressed with the pretty colours.

Arrived 21.30, and anchored in Anse de Corossol, we checked in the next day and did the tour of Gustavia but both Maria and I wanted to look at Haute Couture so begged another day with the shops open.

Tuesday we picked up a buoy in Columbier Bay which was very crowded and then slipped for Marigot the next day.

St Martin

Maria sailing holiday in the Caribbean, 2017

I have just returned to London after an extraordinary month long holiday in the Caribbean staying with my friends Malcolm and Sue on their S/Y “Piano”. During this time I have clocked up 530 miles and on one occasion sailed for 34 consecutive hours from the British Virgin Islands to Antigua.

I joined my friends in Jolly Harbour in Antigua and sailed with them and visited St Barths, St Martin/Sint Maarten, Prickly Pear, Virgin Gorda, Little Jost Van Dyke, Tortola and back to Antigua. We sailed past Necker Island with her 3 fake palm trees which can be flatten down so that its owner can land his helicopter and Mosquito Island also owned by Richard Branson. Also past the various “Dogs” Islands and between Beef Island and Little Camanoe, Guyana Island to Little Jost Van Dyke. We also circled with our dinghy the coast line of Jost Van Dyke. There are so many islands, some uninhibited, some privately owned and some as small as a rock or a patch of sand, with names like Saba Rock, Sandy Spit, Sandy Cay and Green Cay. I walked around the perimeter of Sandy Spit in less than ten minutes; that is how small some of these islands are. Some islands are hilly with goats scrambling over the steep slopes and venturing down as far as the beach below.

St Barths with name streets in Swedish and French, has still a few old buildings from the Swedish era but now is French and exclusive with grand houses owned by the likes of Rockafellers, Rothschilds and one or two Russian oligarchs. It is the French Riviera of the Caribbean and attracts the rich and famous. Its shops and boutiques reflect the elegant setting with “Bonjour, Madam” and “Merci” greetings and very expensive prices.

St Martin/Sint Maarten is half French and half Dutch. There is an amusing story of the French man and the Dutch man who instead of fighting over the island, decided to split it between themselves with a bottle of wine and a bottle of gin respectively and then united against the English who wanted their coffee.

One Tuesday evening we experienced the carnival atmosphere of Grand Case, the picturesque and more ethnic part of St Martin with the boulevard that runs along the sea front closed to the traffic and the local bands playing and the people dancing.

We sailed to Marigot Bay next and visited Fort Louis dominating the bay.

 In the market the day after I met an Italian lady selling small tiles painted by herself with beautiful scenery of the island. She told me that she had been living in St Martin for 16 years after getting tired of Rome, its traffic and the mass of tourists. She had felt suffocated and had decided to emigrate to Costa Rica but life brought her to St Martin instead and she has never even visited Costa Rica. She has become an artist by necessity or maybe inspired by the beauty of the island. In fact she confessed that she could not even draw a simple figure before.

Over to the Dutch side there is Philipsburg, the capital, with an international airport separated from a narrow road by only a wire fence and next to the beach

 over which jumbo jets roar and skim over the heads of the bathers. It is one of the “must feel” thrills. Cruise liners dock here and spill thousands of tourists into the main street full of expensive jewellery shops owned and manned by handsome and smartly dressed Indian men. They have also emigrated to Sint Maarten directly from India and not from British Guyana like I had mistakenly assumed. They live there with their families and their business is selling gold and diamonds.

Antigua with a multi coloured “V” (for victory) crowned by the sun flag has never been conquered by any other European nation but the British, who built forts and watch towers all over the island to defend it from the other fierce contenders. It has Nelson's Dockyard, the oldest Georgian harbour in the world still in use and as relevant to-day as at the time of Admiral Horatio Nelson. We took the local mini bus one day to St. John’s, the capital. The driver was munching a tamarind fruit and offered me a pod. It is sweet and slightly sticky and I kept the seeds. They reminded me of the film “The Tamarind Seed”. It is a spy thriller set during the cold war period and the tamarind seed that sparks the romance and binds together the two lovers from opposite side of the red curtain. My friend Sue has recommended that I also read the book entitled “Nathaniel’s Nutmeg” by Magnus Mills and I have been wondering what kind of marvel that is.

This brings me to mention the numerous spices and juicy fruits grown in the Caribbean: mango, papaya, coconut, guava, star fruit, pineapple and bananas. Vegetables like christophene (sounds like the name of a little girl), bread fruit, cassava, plantaine, squash and avocado. The flowers are fleshy and almost sensual with vibrant colours of warm yellow, orange and red. Here, familiar succulents that never flower in England explode in glorious blooms under the hot and persistent sun.

The West Indies have a rich and interesting history from the Pre-Colombian times of the Arawaks and Caribs to their discovery by C. Colombo, the rush for gold and riches, the warring European powers snatching islands from one another, slavery, plantations and emancipation. Ships carrying sugar, rum, cotton, tobacco and slaves. The names themselves of these islands, like Jost Van Dyke, Norman Island, Sir Francis Drake Channel, Dead Chest conjure up exciting stories of the real pirates of the Caribbean with swash buckling rogues, treasure hunts and shipwrecks. We ourselves saw a not so ancient shipwreck in Deep Bay, Antigua. It sunk in 1905 after an explosion and consequent fire. It sits up-right with the stump of one of the masts protruding out of the water. We circled around it in our dinghy. Its dark shape not so far down from the surface. It is a shelter for schools of small fish and other larger reef fish. Sometimes jelly fish gather here.

I liked the sailing at night with the full moon and the numerous brilliant stars in an unpolluted clear sky. Calm and silence all around apart from the familiar noise of the water flapping against the boat. Far away, over the horizon, the bright lights of a cruise liner, the barely visible white sail of a boat, the faint dark shape of a fishing vessel. Fellow sailors, mute, distant and unknown, going their way.

By day there was a bustle of activity, sightseeing, swimming, snorkelling, sailing to the next bay or taking the dinghy ashore to the laundrette or do the shopping, meeting friends. Or just staying on the boat, taking a rest, sitting on deck reading a book and waiting for the split second “green flash” at sunset. I have seen beautiful sunsets, all different, different light, colours, brilliance and feelings.

The beauty of these islands sometimes moved me because their verdant hills sloping down the sea reminded me of Genoa, my home town in Italy, as it would have looked before it was developed and built up. I remember the marvellous sight of Colombier in St. Barths from up the hill. A calm blue and aquamarine expanse of water scintillating under a cloudless sky and interrupted here and there by enormous brownish-red rocks.

Another marvel were the Baths in Virgin Gorda, these being big natural boulders that cascading on one another over the centuries have formed caverns, grottos and pools big and small were you walk through by crouching, climbing or wading.

 People swim and snorkel in these pools and look at the colourful fish. Also the “bubble” pool in Diamond Cay, Jost Van Dyke, where the waves crush in over the rocks and the pool erupts in froth.

 Adults and children enjoy watching that and wait for the next wave to be bigger and more spectacular. Walking back to the dinghy, along the path we passed groupings of mangrove and there at the sea’s edge I spotted a baby shark. It was swimming alone and unconcerned. I wondered where his mammy and daddy were.

Spotting animals was a big thrill for me. But we did not see many, they are most elusive or maybe they are not so numerous nowadays. There were intelligent big fish at Saba Rock that would gather at the same time each afternoon to be fed by the staff of the holiday resort there. Scores of tourists went to watch how the man dangled the food in front of the fish who would compete with one another in jumping up higher and quicker to snatch it.

 There were also some pelicans on the jetty waiting impassively to target a fish, dive and catch it, all in a matter of seconds. The frigate birds with their large wing span sometimes flying in groups, maybe on their way to a fishing boat where they would steal a fish or two.

I saw my first sea-turtle in St Barths when it came up to the surface for air just a few meters from our boat. Also here I spotted three goats on the hill side. One of them was bigger and was followed around by the same smaller goat, which I heard bleating. Maybe they were mother and baby. I saw goats in other islands and I guess it must have been just past the time of the “goating” season, judging from the number of the cute little creatures. Two of them stopped as I passed on my way up to a fort and looked at me as if they were curious to know who I was.

The British Virgin Islands especially have many natural parks and reserves to protect and encourage the growth of their fauna and flora. There are guide lines for visitors, divers and snorkelers to behave responsibly in order to avoid damaging or destroying the fragile habitat of the coral reefs.

I liked sailing, perched up on deck, looking out at the sea and then at the map in my hand,

 guessing the name of the island we were passing. Observing the land, we were bound to, approach slowly before entering the bay. We would then anchor and raise the courtesy flag of the host country. The skipper would check us in at the Customs Office and I would hope to get another stamp on my passport.

I liked being surrounded by other boats with flags from different countries, Australian, Canadian, American, Norwegian, Dutch, Irish, British and others I did not know. Sailing boats, catamarans, schooners, motor boats and big yachts. I also was fascinated by the names given to the boats. Names of women mostly and of loved ones, but also names that suggest freedom, relief, visions of an easier and happier life or the speed and strength of a beautiful animal. Each boat has an intriguing story behind its name.

There was a regatta in English Harbour, Antigua. One day was for the race of the classic boats and we went to see them.

 Beautiful boats, some as old as 1905 and 1945, lovingly maintained by their owners, with polished wooden decks, gleaming brass and yards of canvas. They were well kept and loved like elegant and expensive vintage cars. The crew were celebrating at the end of the race when family, friends and sympathizers gathered to congratulate them and look at the beautiful array of these old venerable vessels.

I have learned a few simple things about sailing. I know for example on which side of the boat is “port”, the names of the sails; there is one called “MPG” for Multi-Purpose Genoa . Piano has one of a bright yellow colour like sunshine. (See above)What “Down Wind” and “Up Wind” and “to tack” mean. Where is the rudder, the different types of moorings, the channel in the bay. I was allowed to take the wheel a few times when it was easy and safe, pass the winch handle and switch on the engine. I learned to go up and down the steps of the hatch gripping firmly the handles to avoid falling or being hurled against the furniture when the boat is sailing and the sea is rough.

I met some new people, strangers who have shared a few moments of their lives with me, informed and enriched me with new knowledge. And all of this thanks to the generous hospitality of my friends Malcolm and Sue who took great care of me to make sure that I was safe at all times at sea and in the sea, gave me the best seat on deck and did not eat all the salad in the bowl so that I could finish it off.

The skipper honoured me by cooking “spaghetti alla Bolognese” on my last evening aboard Piano and hoisted up the must the Italian flag the next morning. Malcolm and Sue accompanied me to the taxi that would take me to Antigua airport for my flight back to London.