Beyond BVI

We made our sail repair appointment and rigging lesson at Road Reef Marina where Doyle Sail and Bob Phillips maintain a sail loft and office on Tuesday the 4th. They replaced the batons and defective baton holders. The ones we were given in Curacao didn't rotate when the sail came down and therefor broke. Bob also showed us how to put up the new sail bag. It's made a huge difference on lowering the sail properly and efficiently/gracefully. I wonder what Rob Harm was thinking when he ordered the sail; and when we put up the new sail bag and main sail. Guess he was asleep.

We headed out for St. Kitts and Guadeloupe on the fifth. Seas were calm with a NE Trade Wind pushing us along at 6+ knots. We reefed the main just before dark and spent the night in 20-25 knot NE winds fighting weather helm, the tendency of the boat to turn into the wind, due to our boat speed of 8-9 knots: too much sail up! Anyway we made the passage of 126 nm to Basseterre, St. Kitts in less than 24 hours.

 

Harbor at Basseterre, St. Kitts

 

We checked in under simple conditions - they had a passport reader which is unheard of in BVI and because of which I didn't have to write out all of our passport information - and went to Lime (the BVI SIMM card provider for the phone) to find out why the phone didn't work. Seems the Lime representative in BVI didn't understand how to set up the phone for other Lime locations we were visiting even though she said she understood my needs. So, we have been jipped out of $100 US and no internet or phone until we can replace them 'cause Flow (Lime in St. Kitts) couldn't fix a BVI screw-up. After a roadside, local box lunch of salt fish in tomatoe sauce, sweet potatoe, dumpling, and potatoe - yes, it was as horrible as it sounds - we opted to go to Banana Bay on the SE coast which put us 45 minutes closer to our next stop: Deshaies, Guadeloupe.

Just before 0600 we upped anchor in the dark and motored out towards Nevis' South Channel and turned SE towards Rodondo island.

Redonda

Monserrat

 

Just before 1700 we arrived at Dehaise 75 nm away. Seas were calm and blue with NE swells of 6' with periods of 9-10 seconds. Winds were, you guessed it, on the nose at under 10 kph. Quite pleasant to say the least.

 

That night, the winds increased to 30+ kph with gusts to 40. Thankfully we were in snugly on 100' of chain and our ever faithful Rocna anchor just off the cliff on the NE corner of the outer bay: the place was mighty full-up with boats of all sizes and configurations. For two solid days we sat under our yellow flag (quarantine) in the white capped bay waiting for a chance to check-in. Boring!! On Sunday we went ashore, got checked in - had to type all our info in on a French keyboard with place names in French - looked around town, and returned to Kuhela. Up anchor after lunch and headed to Pigeon Bay 8 nm further towards the Saintes. This is the spot Jacques Cousteau in his hayday proclaimed "the finest reef in the world."

While Linda, Steve, and Lorry swam over to the rocks and rocky point, I, late to the water, headed to the beach after checking our anchor and chain. Dead, dead, dead... I saw nothing... They, on the other hand, saw fish, turtles, coral, fans, etc. in great profusion. Lovely!

Monday the 8th and we are motoring SSE around Guadeloupe on our way to Bourg de Saintes where we will anchor around noon. We had our first dose if French masculinity this AM when monsieur La Frog hung his "grande deek" over the bow of his cat 50' away and relieved himself for all to see. Amazing arrogance!

 

Posted with Blogsy