On to Montserrat! (16 48.4 N / 62 12.8 W)

Let's start with the requisite Mismo picture. Yeah, that's her enjoying her giant hammock which we call our bimini!

After being turned back again from our planned sail to Gaudaloupe we anchored in the very southern bay of St. Kitts - Majors Bay.







We really liked this anchorage. Fairly well protected and just us there. Great snorkeling at the eastern tip of the bay. Very clear water and lots of our friends the fish. As much as we liked it, this bay started getting a little rough so on Sunday we moved back up to White House Bay (our 4th visit) where it is much calmer. We plan now to leave on Tuesday but there are some things to accomplish that require town. So on Monday we sail back to Basseterre the main town on St. Kitts. There are two anchorages here and they are BOTH very rolly. We opt for the one fairly far from town but near the customs office where we need to clear out. Having accomplished that we take the LONG dinghy ride to the marina. In town we accomplish our internet tasks at, hopefully, our last visit to Ballahoos (they have coffee cups there with our names on them .... or is it beer mugs?) and then on to the grocery store. Can’t sail without Pringles you know! We bought too much to carry but no problem finding a cab in this town. We load the dinghy and begin to head back to a duty free shop by the cruise line pier and get some rum and wine. On our way we run into our old friends Larry and Debbie on Debonaire! Always fun running into a cruiser you know from all the way back in Luperon last year! Even better, Larry had collected my pay from helping out with the Heineken Regatta. Sweet. I quickly spend it on 5 gallons of gas and 10 of diesel. (no diesel is NOT $15 a gallon as I was told by a cab driver....more like $4.50 us). Now dinghy is heavily ladden with food and fuel. I decide to tow Sue. JUST KIDDING but it is a slow wet ride taking dinghying straight into some 2-3 foot seas. Enee is rolling around like a drunken sailor and we want a good night’s sleep before heading out to Montserrat so, you guessed it, back to White House Bay! We got anchor down and dinghy and motor on board just as night fell. Whew. What a busy damn day!

Finally we’re off! Although it has been a great stay in St. Kitts. I haven’t felt quite so crazy as I usually get when we have an unplanned month long stay somewhere. This is the friendliest island so far. None of the islands have been outwardly unfriendly (well Marco Island in Florida maybe) but often you feel a certain, ‘I’ll deal with you when I’m good and ready’ attitude from island people. Not in St. Kitts. They are happy and proud of their island. I have a theory that attitude might be connected to education as the Kittians seem outwardly to be better read. Just a theory.

So, Tuesday we are up at 0500 and weigh anchor from White House Bay (our 5th stop there!). We have a wonderful sail south past the tip of St. Kitts and then all along the coast of tiny Nevis. Now its no more lee from any island and we try for Montseratt. Well, of course that’s too close to the wind for us so it’s motor, main and a tiny triangle of jib pulled to windward with the lazy sheet as we’ve learned to do. This is our best way to make headway on a heavy windward leg. The seas build to 4-5 feet with an occasional big boy. When we round them off by falling off a little and then coming back to the wind they’re not so bad. When we don’t see them coming and just bury the bow we call it a bell ringer. That’s because when we do that it causes our ships bell down below to ring!

At first we were holding a good line of about 125 degrees true (compass numbers down here are nearly 15 degrees West variation!) which would take us right to the mark. As we head south, though, we have to keep falling off to the west more and more due to wind shift. We sail 145 for a few hours and then it starts coming back to about 135. We decide to sail into the lee of the island rather than tack out here in the big stuff. That works great as when we tack we only have about 3 miles to do in much more settled conditions.

As we sailed closer to Montseratt we could see haze from the island extending off to the west. Actually that’s not haze, that’s ash still blowing off of the island from the eruption in 1995. You need to stay far off this shore if you sail there to keep the ash off of your boat. We plan to exit down the east side of the island when we go.







Little Bay, Montseratt is just that - little. There is a wreck of an old barge on the south shore and the ferry dock on the north shore. You can anchor anywhere but need to leave room for the ferry. No buoys of course. You just have to guess what line and how much room the ferry is going to need. There are a couple of sailboats here and a couple more come in before dark. These are obviously sponsored racing boats. They must be making their way to Antigua for ‘Race Week’. We hoist our yellow quarantine flag and decide to clear customs tomorrow. They rarely work past 3 pm anyway. Tomorrow we’ll explore a little and maybe find internet. We plan to leave Friday and sail to Gaudaloupe.

Great to be on the move again. Arrival in new ports is always very exciting.

Finally, a quiz. What's wrong with this boat named Pi? Scroll down for answer. . .








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Pi = 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 3751 . . . They are off in the thousandths place. Jeez how hard is it to look up the value of Pi. Maybe this work was done in Indiana. No, then it would have been 3.ooooo..... the Pi song!