17:15.0N 62:39.6W

 

We arrived in St Kitts the day before yesterday after island hopping from Culebra (PR) to Christmas Island (USVI) to North Sound (BVI).  The hop to St Kitts was the only overnight passage and it was one of those uncomfortable journeys where the gusty wind is strong enough to throw up confused waves, but too weak to provide any stability through the sails.  There has been no wind for the past couple of days, so tomorrow we should get the unusual experience of motoring to Antigua across a millpond.

 

Basseterre in St Kitts is a bit too focused on the cruise-ship traffic for our liking.  They have the only remaining railway in the Caribbean, a remnant of the sugar days, but at $145 a ticket we passed on that.  There is also the usual pedestrian enclave around the cruise ship dock, but if you step outside this area then the old town is quite scenic, in a bustling Caribbean kind of way.   We had lunch on the first floor of the Ballahoo restaurant, overlooking the town square.  They have a breezy balcony to watch the world pass by.   

 

In the afternoon we took a bus out to the batik factory.  Another setup that is aimed at the cruise passengers, but Andrea picked up some pretty material to make a dress.  The cafe there is pleasant, overlooking the rainforest below.

 

 

Now we are anchored at the south end of the island, next to what is marked on my chart as a salt pond.  When we were sailing down here I saw the AIS signal from a yacht we know, called Captiva, which was somehow moored on this land-locked lake.  It turns out that developers have cut a channel to the sea and built Christophe Harbour, a superyacht marina in the lake.  We took the dinghy inside to visit Dustin and Courtney on Captiva, and to have a look at the new marina and salt pond.  We had to pass through several layers of security to get to the superyacht dock, which harboured just the single yacht.  Apparently they have plans to increase the dockage to 300 yachts, but at the moment it is like a ghost marina.  The web site shows the marina berths are available for purchase at around $2,000,000.  Perhaps not. 

 

Christophe Harbour might be a safe marina but we got the impression that you are only welcome if your yacht is over 100 ft.