St Kitts - the Friendly Island

Well, we are still at St Kitts - both because it is a beautiful place and probably the best island we have been to yet, but also because of the weather going on elsewhere. Just in case anyone was wondering how we check weather to find out what is going on, there are a few ways we can do that. We of course listen to the weather on the VHF radio. The down side of that is the only one that we get at this time is the one from Puerto Rico. It is relayed from there through the various island repeaters such as the one on Sint Maarten. As I said, the downside is it is Puerto Rico but they do report the weather out to the Atlantic although not too far south of Sint Maarten. At this time of year though, the weather south is nearly always the result of weather up north.

Another way we check is using the internet - one of the best sites and definitely the easiest to read is http://www.windguru.com/. It is actually a windsurfers site but it gives winds, waves, directions and just about anything else we might need to know and you can ask for specific regions which is great. There are a couple of other sites also - caribwx is one and the NOAA site is another. Finally, of course, there are a number of SSB channels but we don't have the times all figured out yet as to which ones broadcast reports when.

How this all relates to us staying here is as follows. Due to a late winter storm up north (south to you guys) swells anywhere from 10 - 25 feet (depending on who reports them) are expected to come down from the north Tuesday to Friday so we tucked ourselves into an anchorage at Port Zante which is at Basseterre, the capital of St Kitts, on the southwest coast of the island.

About the island - as I said, it is the best we have been to so far. The people are polite and more than willing to offer help and suggestions. Something we didn't know was that there are apparently a lot of Canadians here and in fact, a lot of the island development is funded through Canadian banks and with Canadian talent. There is even an RBC bank in Basseterre as well as a Scotia Bank (Scotia banks are on a lot of the islands). During our tour yesterday, a local nursing student went along for the ride and told us that 80% of the people that attend Ross University, a school of veterinary medicine are Canadian and there is even a Windsor University, a medical school that is somehow affiliated with the Canadian medical community. The nursing school trains nurses at the diploma and BSN levels. They do their theory work here for 1-2 years and then go to the States to do a year practical work.

The island itself is lush and green. The upper portions are actually a rainforest while the lower parts grow lots of sugar cane. Sugar used to be a major industry here but the cane is used now mostly for making rum. You can also see lots of goats,donkeys, and chickens and we actually saw 3 or 4 groups (we couldn't call them herds, coming from Alberta) of cattle, something we hadn't seen on any of the other islands.








Monkeys also thrive on the island and people keep them as pets.








There are no roads on the middle of the island due to the mountainous terrain (and the rain forest vegetation) and the biggest mountain on the north of the island was actually volcanically active until about 400 years ago. That seems like a long time ago but you can see by the land the results of what went on then. The Black Rock pictures really illustrate this well.







During our tour of the island we stopped at Brimstone Hill - an UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is an old English fortress on top of an upthrusting of lava. The view from the fort is amazing.




We spent Tuesday on the tour and after we got back, we just vegged on the boat. Wednesday in the morning I (Griff) did a little work on one of the bilge pumps and on the man overboard pole while Cheryl was trying out our battery operated sewing machine (it works great for what she was doing so far) making some dish towels, modifying the St Kitts courtesy flag we bought and working on cushion covers.

In the afternoon we went into town and wandered around checking the out of the way places. We also got some laundry done and when we got back we went for a swim and then did the sun shower thing. All in all a totally relaxing day. The wind has been up today, likely due to the weather patterns coming down but our anchorage is snug and we are hardly moving at all.

Tomorrow we may try to get to the north side to see if we can get a glimpse of the big swells. I would love to see some 25 ft swells - not sail in them of course - but the ocean is awesome and to see things like that sometimes puts our place on earth in perspective