Dalton W. Williams
St. Christopher (St.Kits)
The islands we are visiting now; Saba, St. Kits, Nevis and Montserrat are all very mountainous and all were formed by volcano's. They are often called "The Mountains That Brush The Clouds."
The sail to St. Kits was an easy one with the wind on the beam for a welcome change! I don't know what it is, but I would swear that the wind gods arrange for the wind to blow on the nose of every sailboat all the time. {laughing}
St
Kits is one of the few islands that still has a large sugar and rum business
remaining from the 1700's. As you can see from the picture the northern
part of the island has large gentle slopes at the bottom of it's mountains.
These are where the sugarcane is grown and harvested before being transported to
Basseterre at the south end of the island for processing. The light green
fields are sugarcane and the brown fields are where the cane has been harvested.
We arrived at Basseterre, St. Kits on Sunday afternoon at around 4:00 PM. This has to be the most yacht unfriendly harbor I have ever seen. No wonder everyone says to give St. Kits a miss. The marina is hidden behind a huge rock wall so that only the tip tops of the mast can be seen and the marina entrance is totally out of sight so it is a challenge to find the entrance. When I did find it, I was not about to try to enter with huge boulders sticking out of the water on one side and a concrete wall with derelict looking boats tired on the other. When I called the marina on Ch 16, the dialect spoken was so fast I just gave up and headed across to Customs.
The customs dock was all the way across the harbor in a building with no visible signage to indicate the customs office. As it turns out the customs was not open until Monday any way. Frustrated by this point, I just raised the "Q" flag and we sailed on down to White House Bay and anchored for the night.
As we were anchoring we heard
someone shouting "Quietly!" and turned to see our friends on Gallant anchored
near by. They had arrived the day before and spent a day in Basseterre
before sailing down to White House Bay. They told us we had not missed
anything by not going into town. After a short swim we watched the wild monkeys on shore chasing the
cows ... yes real monkeys and real cows ... Amazing!
Andrea, Don, Tim and Alex came
over for snacks at sunset. Gretchen really liked "White House Bay" and
it's stark beauty of dry landscape, rock bluffs and a few cactus and scrub brush. Not
what I would expect on a Caribbean Island. As for me, it was "ok" though I
could have seen that landscape anywhere in western Colorado.
We were invited for a pancake breakfast this morning on Gallant. David was chief turning out two dozen wonderful pancakes for the six hungry sailors enjoying the good food and sparkling morning. Most drowned their pancakes in maple syrup, I on the other hand preferred the wonderful New Zealand butter. After breakfast, it was back to Quietly and the morning turned to boat work before I cooked lunch of Bar-B-Q meat balls along with English peas. The afternoon was spent swimming, snorkeling around a good reef at the edge of the cliff where there were lots of fish. Then we swam across the end of the bay over to explore an old underwater wreck. The best way to find the wreck is to look for the large rocks just above the surface on the southern end of White House Bay about 100 feet from shore. Just off the rocks there is a small white buoy (actually a plastic bottle) tied to the rudder of the wreck, It is in about 12 feet of water and lays out with its ribs clearly visible just beneath the surface. The wreck actually wraps most of the way around the rock that you see on the surface. Parts of the engine are are still there along with the prop.
The following morning we picket up the anchor after breakfast for the short sail across to Nevis.