Antigua-St Bartholemy

Ocean Science's blog
Glenn Cooper
Sun 1 Jan 2017 16:17
15:54.13N 58:15.71

Writing this at 3pm our time (4 hours behind GB) on NY Eve

Two hours of motoring, then the sailor's favourite noise - silence. downwind
sailing with occasional creaks, not all of which come from my knees. We are
making 7 to 8 knots, the wind is a bit variable, but St Barts by this
evening is looking like a possibility. Sailing well on both the mains and
on the Front Thingy

St Barts sounds interesting. Full name is St Barthelemy. It was Swedish
until the 1870s, but Sweden did not do colonial very well. Most scarpered
back to Sweden, then there were no Swedes at all, so it was ceded to France.
It is now actually part of France, being in the Departement of Guadeloupe. We are therefore in the EU at this moment.

Later...morning of 1 Jan

Wow, a hairy day yesterday , bringing us to a mooring off Gustavia, capital of St B (maybe the name of the capital
is the only Swedish thing left here) at about 9pm on NYEve.
Regularly clocking 10 knots, wind up to 24kn. We were towards the top end of the sail configuration.

We have a peaceful mooring at the base of a cliff with trees. We can see Gustavia which at midnight had a huge firework display, accompanied by horns, hoots and other sound blasts from the very large number of Gin Palaces (or Chromium Covered Tart Traps) which surround us on this mooring.
We feel a bit like Gulliver among the Big People. The bottle of Veuve brought by Aileigh is no more - downed at midnight from some swanky new cups embossed with the boat's name.

A lateish start this morning. Scrambled eggs and ham, with toast from bread made in our excellent breadmaker. We will jet across to Gustavia shortly. We have a technical problem with getting pictures onto the blog. We will try and put this right when we go ashore.

Pip pip from the crew of Ocean Science - on a fresh sunny day after some fairly heavy rain overnight.

and a happy New Year to all our readers.