Saturday 27^th December Kaimin is berthed on the clearance dock in Antigua and I go ashore to do the necessary paperwork. There is an orange painted building with 3 white doors, immigration, customs, and port authorities, a lady is sitting outside and tells me to go into immigration first. I open the door and a uniformed man sweeping the floor barks at me to wait and close the door. I wait outside; he eventually beckons me in and asks for our clearance papers from our last port. I have a beautiful leather file with everything in individual plastic folders that I hand over. He barks at me ‘No you must give them to me’ and holds his hand out. “Yes Sir’ You can imagine the thoughts going through my head, he then tells me I must enter all the boats details, crew and cruising details on the computer. It’s not switched on, he can see me looking how to switch it on, but doesn’t offer any advice, eventually I find the on/off switch but then it needs log in details which I have to ask for, in a very official voice he tells me the log in details that will be unique to us and that I must remember it and that it’s very important that everything I enter is correct otherwise I will have trouble wherever we go, great! half an hour later three pieces of paper are printed he stamps them, signs them tells me to take them next door and then come back.

Next door the printed forms are checked against our documents, stamped and signed again and I return to the first door. He keeps one of the forms and tells me to go to the last door, deep breadth. 3^rd door has a lovely lady who chats away whilst filling forms in, asks for payment and gives me our cruising permit that’s it all done I breath a sigh of relief then I’m given the parting shot ‘you must come back and check out  before you leave’ I’m really looking forward to that. It’s a good job John hadn’t been with me I’m sure he would not have kept his temper.

Anyway back on Kaimin we are escorted to our berth and by 5pm we are standing on land. Oh Yes!

Jolly Harbour is lovely; close to our berth are small bars, restaurants, small shops, and a swimming pool. Behind the marina buildings is the most beautiful scenery, high mountains covered in trees and plants and blue skies with fluffy clouds everyone we talk to, locals and other boaties, are happy, smiley and friendly. Bliss! Smile, breath and relax.

Unfortunately we’ve only got 2 days here as we have arranged to meet some friends in St Kitts 1^st January but those two days were lovely. We cleaned the boat, swam, shopped, drank in the bars and had delicious meals in the restaurants. We checked out of Jolly Harbour on the evening of 29^th December and it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.

By 6.30am Tuesday 30^th December we were on our way to St Kitts. We have a really good sail Force 4 to 5; the guys catch three small Tuna. We sail through the narrow channel between St Kitts and Nevis arriving at the entrance to the marina at 2.30 pm. We had tried to pre-book a berth in the marina but had been told they didn’t take bookings. We radio the authorities and the marina office, but the marina is full, so we have to anchor off and dinghy ashore to clear immigration, customs and port authorities.

The guys launch the dinghy and fit our brand new outboard, it has to be run for 10 minutes without moving, and then we have to run it in for 10 hours.

We dinghy ashore and visit the marine office first to see when we can get a berth, a lovely guy called Charlie tells us that the marina is full as its carnival time, but if we phone at 9am in the morning he’ll see what he can do. We then clear customs and walk into town to clear in at immigration and port authorities that are near the cruising ships dock. Once again the officials are difficult but not as bad as in Antigua.

We explore the town it is chaotic, the streets are pot holed with huge open drainage ditches running along the side. Sometimes there’s a bit of a pavement sometimes none, the shops are tumble down buildings sometimes with holes in the walls and just a tin roof, but they’ve been brightly painted to distract from the squalor. All around in front of the shops on the streets anywhere there’s a bit of space are street vendors with rickety trestle table selling coconuts, drinks, sweets, or bits of plastic junk etc. or ½ an oil drum BBQ with spicy chicken or steak, and popcorn machines everywhere, everyone is happy and friendly. The roads are grid locked with rusty and dented cars, pick-ups and vans and people weaving in and out of them. There’s loud music blaring out and it’s all hustle, bustle and noise. We spend a quite night at anchor and have the fresh Tuna for our evening meal.

The following morning after breakfast John and Denzil decide to visit Charlie again and are successful in obtaining a berth. The berth is between two poles at the bow that have to be lassoed as you reverse in then stern lines to the pontoon. We berth like professionals, and everyone is impressed.

New Years eve Denzil goes into town for the Carnival and John and I go to a fantastic French restaurant and have a delicious meal. We decide to go back to the boat to watch the fireworks but we fall asleep and miss them.

New Years day we meet Andrew and Dawn off a cruise ship and we spend a lovely chilled day, having drinks on Kaimin and going out for lunch. Andrew and Dawn have to be back on the cruise ship by 5.30pm so we decide to check the carnival out.

The carnival procession is split into groups of people from different churches, each group has a massive truck or a tractor pulling a trailer with it’s own generator and a band playing extremely loud calypso or reggae music, the speakers are the size you see at our outdoor music festivals and the beat vibrates through your whole body.  Behind the bands are scantily dressed dancers, young beautiful girls, young men and Mamas with asses the size of double decker busses but one and all are shaking their butts. Their costumes are absolutely beautiful, brightly coloured with exotic headdresses, but the dancing is more like an exhibition of various sexual movements and sometimes quite shocking. It’s crazy man! The streets are packed with onlookers with police and military controlling the crowd, but everyone including the officials are laughing, happy and well behaved, and we did not see any trouble anywhere.

Whilst in St Kits we went on a scenic narrow gauge train journey around the island. The slaves built the railway track to carry sugar cane from the fields to the refineries. We are in an open carriage with a lot of locals, being served rum punches and listening to a hilarious commentary about the places we pass. The scenery is magnificent but in places the track goes over deep ravines on what they describe as bridges, all I could see was the railway track with nothing holding it in place scary! Another day we caught the local bus to Brimstone Fortress engineered by the British but built by the slaves. It’s high on a volcanic hill and the walk up takes about an hour,and a lot of sweat, but the views from the top make it worthwhile.  The fortress is a world heritage site and is well maintained without being touristy and explains the history in an easy to understand manner.

By Tuesday 6^th we are ready to leave and head back to Antigua to collect our new sails.