Nevis

We stayed at St. Kitts until the Saturday after Good Friday. By then the chance of hitting some of the big swells from the north was gone. As it was we were fortunate that we stayed. When we went in to town on Friday we were able to see some of the festival clowns that St. Kitts is noted for. There was a group of them dancing in the square by the cruise ship dock. Of course we hadn’t brought a camera with us. Then Friday night we were sitting on the boat reading and Griff said it sounds like fireworks. Sure enough we went up on deck and enjoyed a spectacular fireworks display. We oooh’d and aaah’d appropriately. The reason for the fireworks was St. Kitts is hosting the Carifta Games (track and field) for the first time and Friday was the opening ceremonies.

Saturday morning we headed out to Nevis. Almost ideal sailing weather – the wind was from the ENE at 12 – 20 knots most of the morning, some gusts to 26 knots, and the seas were from the ENE and less than 1 meter in height. The only thing that could have been better was that there could have been more sunshine. There was cloud cover most of the way. We managed to sail the 11 nautical miles in a little under 3 hours.

In Nevis we didn’t have to worry about setting our anchor. They have a veritable field of mooring balls. Mooring balls are in permanent positions attached to or weighted to the bottom. You come up to them, using your boat hook, grab the rope with ring attached and attach a dock line from each side of your bow and cleat them off. Because the mooring balls are all in a set location there is no danger of hitting another boat when you swing with the breeze or swells and of course you don’t have to worry about your anchor slipping because you did not set it properly. That makes for an easier nights sleep.

For Julie and Millie - this mooring looks out on 4 miles of beach.

We went in to Charleston, the capitol, to check in and check out the town. There was a market on so we purchased a lot of fresh vegetables. The market was neat. Most of the stands were ‘manned’ by older women. They seemed to share scales between stands, and kept the change underneath the cloth the produce was lying on. I asked one of the ladies for a yam because I had found some recipes for yams that I wanted to try. It took a while to convince her and the lady beside her that yes I wanted a yam and not a sweet potato. Yams here are more like our white potatoes rather than sweet potatoes. I finally got a yam and we had it cooked with onion last night for supper. It is actually quite a starchy, bland vegetable, but tasted good with the onions. Again no camera with us so no pictures of the market.

Today we went in to the beach to wash the dinghy. While there we found out that even this anchorage felt the effects of the 5 meter swells. We could see how high the swells had come up onto the beach – about another 20 feet from where they were today. I’m glad we stayed in St. Kitts as long as we did.