Archive for the ‘sailing’ tag
Doing Good to Others
We reef the sails, as we see the clouds gathering. While we are still sailing in the sun, the darkness packs at the horizon. That is how it goes in the Caribbean this time of the year: sunshine one moment, rain the next. Under the threatening clouds hurrying towards us, we see the white foam on the waves. The wind will pick up soon. We are sailing to Petit St Vincent in the Grenadines. Everyone calls it “PSV”, for short. An island barely one mile in diameter, covered with palm trees and bush. It is not far anymore, maybe another half an hour of sailing. But we don’t not make it in time. The rain catches up with us, and before we know it, we are engulfed in a dense curtain of water gushing down. I studied the pilot book this morning, and know how the anchorage looks like, by heart. The GPS guides me towards the entrance between the coral heads and the beach.
As we steer into the anchorage, we put the kids below deck, drop the sails, and start the engine. Tine goes to the bow, ready to drop anchor. I steer the boat right in-between the other anchored ships. The rain gushes down. Visibility is only ten meters, sometimes even less. We loose sight of the other boats. Even though we motor slowly, sometimes an anchored boat pops up through the curtain of rain, out of no-where it seems, when it is almost too late to avoid a collision. The wind is strong and gusty, shifting often 90 degrees. A sailboat, and certainly one like ours with a short keel, and very beamy – flat wide bottomed – gets easily pushed around by the wind. Once the boat starts turning with the wind, there is no way to stop the momentum. Then you just HAVE to turn.. It makes it difficult to maneuver between anchored boats, all swinging on their anchor chains, in the stormy wind… But we do well, find a proper spot, and drop the anchor in one go. Phew!
It storms and rains the whole night, but the next morning is bright and sunny, revealing the small paradise we are anchored in. Hardly any clouds left. The sea is clear light green-blue, several fishing terns are gliding high up in the sky, without moving their wings. A soft breeze moves through the leaves of the palm trees bordering the beech of bright white sand. Paradise once more.
In the afternoon, while having brunch on the deck of the boat, we spot two young local fishermen in the water, dragging what seems to be a white surf board. I get a bit suspicious as it does not look like they are having fun, rowing wildly with their arms, barely keeping their head above water. Through the binoculars I can see a black thing on their surf board. Maybe a large plastic bag or a net. As a rain squall comes closer, they seem the more anxious to get ashore. It is all a bit weird: what are they doing in a channel between two islands, on a surfboard? I take our dinghy, and motor to them, only to find that there is no surfboard, but they were dragging a small white wooden boat filled to the rim with water. The black thing I saw earlier is an outboard engine they had unscrewed and put inside the boat. “Mista, you help us, mista?”, they ask. I throw them a rope and tow them ashore. They drag their boat onto the beach, crawl onto the sand, and lay on their back, exhausted. Barely waving their hands to thank me.
When I get back to our sail boat, Hannah, our youngest, stands on the bow of our ship, shouting and dancing “My dad is a superhero! Superdad in action! My dad can do anything!..” Lana gives me a hug. “Dad, I am proud of you. The people on the other boats were just watching, but you DID something… Did you those guys give you anything to thank you?” I tell them when we do good to others, somewhere we will be rewarded by something good ourselves..
In the afternoon, when we scuba dive, and find some astonishingly beautiful cone shelves, Lana says “You see, we are rewarded now. We did something good, and now we are rewarded with these beautiful shelves. We will take them with us, and put flowers in them. As a reminder to do good to others!”.
I guess my kids learned a lesson that day.
Continue reading The Road to the Horizon’s Ebook, jump to the Reader’s Digest of The Road.
St.Kitts
St.Kitts and the neighbouring island of Nevis are an independent state since 1983. Their history is somewhat typical for a Caribbean island. They were discovered in 1493 by Columbus, and named Saint Christopher (still the official name for St.Kitts), but only settled in 1623 by the English. The French who landed a few years later, hooked up with the English to massacre the resident Carib Indians, and St.Kitts was divided between the two (then) super powers. Of course they did not manage to co-exist for long, so there were frequent squabbles, culminating in a one month siege of the impressive English fort at Brimstone Hill. Eventually the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, returned St.Kitts to the British.
Good for them as both St.Kitts and Nevis have fertile slow-sloping volcanic planes, which made the sugar plantations to most profitable in the region. On top of that, Nevis got known for its natural spas.
Both islands became an independent state in 1983, originally including Anguilla into the federation. The latter was not too happy, and kicked the butts of the the St.Kitts policemen stationed on their island, until they fled, followed by a mock attack on St.Kitts by the handful Anguillan men on a small vessel. Rumour said they were all drunk. The Anguillans continued to make so much trouble that the British finally got fed up and invaded Anguilla in big force, only to be greeted by a few grazing goats and elderly people raising their glass of rum to them: that is what the Anguillans wanted, to be back under British control. Ha, what a joke. And this was not during Middle Ages, this is 1960′s. we’re talking about!
Back to St.Kitts: Volcanic, so not much in terms of white beaches, but loads and loads of fertile land, so the island is very dense green, with forest and sugarcane. The government owned and controlled all the sugarcane plantations, until 1995, when it was determined market prices would never make sugarcane profitable (again). Since then, the sugarcane has not been harvested, and grows wild amongst dozens of plantation ruins, which make very interesting sights by themselves. Gradually pieces of land are donated to residents for agriculture, but as we drove around the island, still, on most of the “cultivated” land, you see sugarcane. Ten year old sugarcane.
It is a lovely island. Rather poor, but clean, well maintained. A bit of tourism with a few massive (American) resorts (Four Seasons and Marriott, if I remember well), and cruise ship facilities. But tourism is still being developed. The towns still have much of their former shapes and houses, and not too much of the modern malls and cheap mass tourism facilities have creeped in. 
Oh, there is a well known fish restaurant on the outskirts of Basseterre, the capital, called the Fishman’s Warf. To be avoided. The lemon daiquiris were terrible, the fish was grilled dry, and the crab was simply off. The latter smelled like pure ammonium. When I returned it to the kitchen, even the cook could not stand smelling it for more than a few seconds…
Oh, oh, and before I forget it: there is a lovely and relative new small marina in Basseterre, the only decent shelter for storms amongst the island chain of Saba, Statia, St.Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat. Recommended! I hope they can maintain it in high standards as it is an asset for the region.
Oh, oh, oh, and you might have to run around a bit in the port to find the immigration and customs dudes.. The former, we never found, and after three days, we left, without even having officially ‘entered’ the country…
Statia
The Dutch settlers arrived here in 1636 and set up sugar and tobacco plantations, but it was the trade which made the island flourish in the eighteenth century. At that time, over 3,500 ships would visit Statia every year, trading in anything the world traded in, then. Slaves, gold, silk, embroideries, weapons, you name it. For a while it was the commercial center of the Caribbean. Even nations at war would trade with eachother here, with one selling to the Statian traders and the enemy buying from the Statians.
By mistake, Statia was the first ever to give an official canon salute to a rebel American ship in 1776, thus indirectly recognizing the United States as a souvereign state. The English were not amused and it is said this salute to an American ship contributed to the English-Dutch war, during which Admiral Rodney occupied and plundered the island. An amusing anecdote was that he could not find much gold, but observed the Dutch-Jewish settlers sure held a lot of funerals. On Rodney’s orders, one of the coffins was opened and they found it was full of gold and valuables: the settlers were burying their valuables. Rodney confiscated all of the treasures on his personal account, and was almost court-martialed for this theft, were it not that at that time, he won a sea battle near Les Saintes, off Guadeloupe. And he was pardoned for his theft.
When he exiled the Jewish settlers to neighbouring St.Kitts, he got suspicous again and had the coats of the prisoners examined. Once again, he found their coats were stuffed with gold…
There is only one main village on Statia: Oranjestad, whose lower town used to be the main trading post of the Caribbean, before it eroded and was washed away by hurricanes. In the pictures, you clearly see the dominant volcano, Upper Oranjestad and the lower town, below the cliff. Some walls of the old town can still be seen underwater, just 20-30 meters from the shore, making it an excellent diving and snorkeling area.
Statia is off the beaten track for the tourists. Most come here for the diving, but for the rest, there is not much to do. It is a very laid back island. Very, very laid back. The first evening we were here, we asked which fresh fish they had, and the answer was: “None. All is frozen”. We did not think much of it, until the next evening, we asked for fresh fish in another restaurant. 
Once again, the answer was: “None, all frozen”. “But how come”, we asked, “there is plenty of fish in the ocean here?”. The expat waiter sighed and asked “How long have you been on the island, sir?”. “Two days”. “And in those two days, have you seen any of the fishermen on the water?”, the waiter asked. “No”, we said. “Right”, was the answer, “To fish means to 
work. There is a saying here: ‘If you see someone working in Statia, he ain’t from here’. So rather than fishing, the people here prefer to import their fish frozen from St.Martin.”. Go figure.
And somewhere this attitude reflected on the island as a whole. In a positive way: there is no crime, people just go about their business, they are friendly (the more for us, as we speak Dutch!). But also in a negative way: What could have been made into a nice marina, the harbour was just a pile of rocks and a short pier for the tugboats working on the oil tankers. Once you step off the pier, you see rubbish and junk everywhere. People said plastic bags are the island’s state flower, as you used to see them flying off the trees everywhere. Once again, a pity.. An island paradise with a lot of junk. Still you could see some beautiful houses. In the end, every island in the Caribbean has its own charm. 
St Barts
After almost a week in Anguilla, we sailed to Sint Barthelemy (St.Barths or St.Barts for short). We were heading straight into the wind, so we motored most of the way, with waves spraying in the cockpit most of the time. But St.Barts was worth it.
Discovered by Columbus in 1493, the first French settlers only came in 1648, but were massacred by the Caribs. A later attempt was more successful and the French turned the natural hurricane-proof harbour into a mooring port for buccaneers who plundered the Spanish galleons. In 1784, the French turned over the ownership of the island to the Swedes in return for free port rights in Gotenburg, at the other side of the world.
After a devastating fire in 1852, the Swedes did not have the funds to rebuild the capital, Gustavia, and sold the island back to the French in 1878 for the sum of US$45,700, who made it a duty-free port. And it still is today. Called “the Riviera of the Caribbean”, it is said to be a play ground for the rich and famous.
It shows, the island was dotted with beautiful houses, clean streets, and small hotels. Houses were well taken care of, people were friendly and forthcoming. The whole island – which is only 25 square kilometers, felt like a French Mediterranean village. Rather expensive to live in, the locals said. But we did not mind a bit of luxury.
Once more, we enjoyed the views and the beaches. The girls gave kayaking a try, while Tine and I thought the sunchairs were just fine… 
Anguilla
After a few days in St.Martin, we got onto the boat and sailed for about six hours to Anguilla. We anchored in Road Bay.
Here is a view from a hill top, down on Road Bay. You can see the port on the left, and the old salt pond on the right. 
It was a lovely anchorage, with locals racing their boats on weekends. The beach was clean, for a main port that is, and offered lovely sunsets.
There were only a few boats in the main port, typical for Anguilla, which seems to be off the beaten track for most tourists. I can not imagine why. The beaches were amongst the most beautiful we had ever seen in the Caribbean.
We drove around the island for a day, to get a taste of the atmosphere. People were laid back and friendly. A really enjoyable island, without the mass tourism of St.Martin.
We did two trips with the boat: to Sandy Island (you can see our boat anchored in a distance) and to the cliffs in Little Bay, which made good snorkeling. 
The weather was nice, about 27 dgr C in the shade. The water was 29 dgrs C. It was hard to imagine that just 10 days before, we were sailing in Belgium, in foul weather gear (see this post). Only one night, we had a “tropical wave” (a storm) passing us, the only one during our sailing trip. It held me up all night on anchor watch, as the wind turn around 360 degrees (it was the first time I experienced wind from the West in the Caribbean!). and had our boat swing a bit too close to another ship on a fixed mooring. At 1 am I actually had to get into the dinghy and help out another boat who had problems anchoring. For the sailors amongs you, I will post some ‘bareboat charter horror stories soon…
Peter Casier.
