Heading South
Blue Sky's Voyage
George & Michael
Sat 28 Apr 2007 13:22
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Dear Friends
23 April
We had a few days in French St Martin and
completed our purchases, including the Fortress anchor which duly turned up
on time from Florida. At $600 it's not so much an anchor as a lifestyle
statement in anchoring technology, but promises more holding power than ....
er.... A. Blair hanging on far too long ?
As I write this bit, we're back in the
simply lovely Anse de Colombiers in St Barths. We actually arrived yesterday
afternoon, then checked into the island today, accompanied by a good lunch and
shopping. This really is a great anchorage: after swimming with the turtles
this morning, we rock in the hammock, watching the sun gently set and listen to
odd wheezy gasps from the subsequent darkness - which is the turtles coming up
to breathe. Just magical and we wish you were here to enjoy it with
us.
George has a night off as Marco has decided
to cook tonight, so no surprises for guessing something pasta based. Smells
good.
Here's a pic of the main harbour in St
Barths - Gustavia
 26 April - St Kitts
(and the pasta was good!)
Since the weird southerly winds have been
replaced by pukka easterly trades, we had a great sail south from St Barths to
St Kitts. With glorious clear skies and averaging a relaxed seven knots, Michael
observed that sailing didn't get much better than this, to which George
responded quite accurately that this was the sixth time I'd said that this year.
But it's true, the sailing really is fantastic here.
 Back in Basseterre, St Kitts (marina above)
we had an entertaining visit to Immigration this morning, since the office was
closed when we checked in with Customs yesterday. The conversation went a bit
like this...
"Have you checked in with Customs
?"
"Yes, I did that yesterday and they asked me
to check in with you this morning."
"So you didn't check in with Immigration
yesterday ?"
"No: the office was closed, so I'm here this
morning"
"Oh dear."
where follows a five minute telephone call
including the discovery that I did do Customs yesterday (I had the paperwork
anyway...) and that it was OK for her to check our passports in today. The phone
call also included a discussion about the cricket progress and asking how the
baby was and general chitchat for several minutes - all in Patois so I guess I
wasn't supposed to understand
"Can I have the passports ?"
"Yes of course, here you are."
"Republic of Italy ! Oh dear ! You'll need a
Caricom visa for that. do you have one?"
(nationals of countries other than the USA,
Canada, Europe and a few others need visas for Caricom countries during the ICC
World Cup)
"No. I thought that it wasn't necessary for
Italians to have a visa as the European Union countries don't need
one."
"But it says 'Republic of
Italy'."
"Yes, it's part of Europe."
"So it's part of Britain?"
"No. it's part of the European Union, just
like France and Germany and so on. If you want I'll show it to you on that
(world wall chart) over there."
"I'm sure you need a visa for Republic of
Italy."
there follows another phone call on the
lines of 'you do need a visa for Italy, don't you' and several minutes of
general discussion and 'so you don't need one then? are you sure?'
etc....
and then she finds the visa manual,
carefully hidden on the desk right in front of her, which confirms that Italy is
amazingly part of Europe and is indeed on the list of countries not needing a
visa. Despite this cast iron confirmation, we take the opportunity to review the
rest of the manual as we have nothing else to do....
And then for all of 60 seconds, she stamps
the 3 passports, notes 'date of entry' and 'admitted until' and still manages to
note date of entry as 25/05/07 in my passport, but I can't afford another half
hour to point out the slip.
So you may complain about inefficiency in
the UK (Greenwich Council please stand up) but you really don't know how lucky
you are.
Thereagain, maybe it's just poor Geography
lessons, the boy who helpfully wheeled the trolley of groceries back to the
marina got into conversation.
"So where are you from?"
"I'm from England."
"I've been there - Manhattan,
England."
You don't want to hear the rest do
you?
so you probably need a visual joke after
that - here's a rasta 'fishing boat' in the marina at
Basseterre....
 hopefully you can just see the name 'zero
tolerance' !
Best Wishes
George & Michael
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