On To Nevis

Well, it is now the 4th of March and we are overdue with for a blog so here goes. We left you - or you left us - in White House Bay, St Kitts. Some of the things to catch up on there - we mentioned the boat Catalyst in the last blog. Well, we ended up going for potluck snackies on their boat along with another couple from the boat Piquet (pronounced PK for Peter and Karen - cute eh!). They were all old sailors, having travelled a lot farther and for a lot longer time than we have, although come to think of it, who hasn't. Anyway, we mostly listened and it was quite enjoyable. Catalyst left the next day for the north and Piquet left the day after, the same day we did, for Nevis.

Although we have to be in Nevis for the 8th for Cheryl's appointment, we were in no particular rush to get there so we elected to go to Major's Bay, which is on the very south end of St Kitts. Although seas were supposed to be from the NE we were still getting some roll when we got there so put out a stern anchor to keep us into the swells. Overall we were quite comfortable after we had gotten settled. We initially anchored in about 9 feet of water. The charts and Doyle's guidebook, our bible, indicated that the depth was consistent throughout the bay so we thought we didn't have a lot of choice. Our keep depth is 6 ft so that left us 3 ft between us and the bottom when we anchored. Of course there is a tide and there is also a certain amount of movement while the anchor settles in and also some constant movement due to winds and seas.

What this boils down to is we were watching our depth indicator and it showed we were varying in depth below the keel between 3 ft and 1.8 ft. Well, the bottom there is sand with weeds so even if we had touched it wouldn't have hurt anything but it still makes you think. Then when we dove the anchor and watched the keel from underwater we realized just how much up and down movement there was. Pretty scary view!!! As I said, however, charts indicated this was the depth everywhere so we thought we would not stay there too long. As it turned out there was another boat there anchored ahead of us that we had previously heard on the Coconut Telegraph so when we had the dinghy down to go to the next bay for a visit, we stopped and talked and found out they were in about 18 ft of water so when we got back we re-anchored, feeling much less apprehensive after doing so.

One of the first things we did after we settled was to dinghy around the corner of Major Point to a couple of bays a bit further east along the south coast, Banana Bay and Cockleshell Bay. Banana Bay was not very attractive so we focussed on Cockleshell Bay. There are a couple of bars under construction there and as well there is a hotel, beach bar and some small shops at the east end. We wandered around for a while picking up shells on the beach, doing some beach art and eventually went back to the boat. Since we were at a better anchor point we decided to stay in Major's Bay until Monday when we would head for Nevis.

Griff's self portrait in mixed media (sand and sea grass)

What was in Major's Bay you ask?? Well, there is a car ferry that runs from St Kitts to Nevis and back and it picked up and dropped off at the ferry station there. Actually calling it a ferry station is a bit of overkill because all that is there is a ramp into the water and a small building, I assume for the people who don't have cars to wait in if it rains. It was fairly busy over the weekend, with quite a few people bringing their cars to the ferry station and leaving them there,riding over on the upper deck of the ferry. The ferry was not noisy and in fact Major's Bay was one of the quietest we have been in, probably because a lot of the time we were the only boat there.

Item 2 of interest - there was a huge fuel barge that had been abandoned on the beach. We got a chance to talk to some guys who were doing an environmental study on the feasibility of moving it. The developers of the big resort complex that is supposed to be coming in (it will take up about 2/3 of the south end of St Kitts) would like the barge moved off the beach if it can be done safely and I suppose within reasonable cost. Apparently the barge had originally gone aground on the north end of Nevis. "Barge movers" had come in to re-float it and try to get it back to wherever they were going to take it when a storm came up. The movers apparently tried to beach the barge under control but it didn't work so now it sits, a huge rusted hulk on the beach. I suggested to Cheryl that knowing how these things work, if they can't move it they could always put a floor on the top and make a beach bar/restaurant out of it.

While we were examining it we saw 3 small squid swimming beside it. It was kind of weird because at first we couldn't tell which was front and which was back. They were moving in one direction and then without turning they would move in the opposite direction. We figured out that the water was floating them one way and when they got far enough (by whatever standard they used to figure out what far enough was) they would shoot forward until they were back where they had been. Cool.

Walking along the beach we noticed someone had been doing some sand sculpturing. It was some kind of reptile with eggs. We named it a sandosaurus.

Anyway, Monday we sailed to Nevis. Because it was only about 4.5 nm we just put the foresail up and were there in an hour. That will be the next blog.