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Date: 25 Feb 2012 15:51:00
Title: St Barths, FWI
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Here we are in St Barths, playground of the rich and famous! We arrived after an interesting sail down from St Martin, the weather was definitely rougher than expected and I spent the whole time feeling dreadful - the last few sails have made me realise that more heavy duty drugs are needed, the electric band is simply not doing the job!!  I have to say that it normally would, but we have had a few crossings of rough confused seas and they really do not agree with me!! Anyway we arrived safely.  I have been looking forward to getting here for ages, you read about the shopping, the restaurants and the lifestyle in general and everything appeals.  It is wall-to-wall mega yachts, most of them gin palaces, bit there are also lots of huge sailboats as well.  
The harbour is right in the centre of town.  We anchored out of town and when we arrived it was fairly full in the anchorage except for one large gap where a boat was just pulling out - perfect. We put out as much chain as we could as we were anchored quite deep and went ashore to check in.  It is usually very easy in the French islands and they need little information above the basic, but here was different, and they charge €15 per night just to drop the anchor!!!! Although we had planned a maximum of a week we booked three nights, the rest to be decided if we liked it.  After a jaunt ashore and a beer in Le Select, home of the 'cheeseburger in paradise', bit greasy I am told so we didn't bother to try it, we headed back to the boat.  Saturday, we cleaned the outside of the boat in the morning. This is usually a 'blue' job - I only helped out doing this because I was promised a shopping trip in the afternoon and I was building up brownie points and I needed as many as I could get as they only have expensive shops here! The shopping is great, it is wall-to-wall boutiques, expensive, but there are some great finds if you look hard enough.  
Sunday, as most of the main town areas were closed, we hired a car to tour the island.  Being St Barths, there are no cheap, rubbishy cars, the most popular is the Mini Cooper Convertible! So car hired, off we went.  The lady at the car hire place said that the whole island was more than do-able in a day.  The map was as usual very basic, and showed very few roads so the likelihood of getting lost seemed small.....
After leaving the main town the first 'sight' we came to was the airport.  As with all volcanic islands, they squash airports and landing strips onto the only flat space available.  The landing is usually done through a small gap in the hills, and the takeoff is over the beach.  Yachts aren't allowed to anchor in the bay near the airport as the end of the runway is at the beach and the planes wouldn't clear the masts!!  
The beaches here are great.  We were advised to visit all of them.  The ones on the northern coast are the fashionable, see-and-be-seen beaches with bars and restaurants with big beach beds to lie on while you sip vintage champagne, and the ones on the south are the 'sauvage' beaches.  These are much wilder and with no facilities.  We had our picnic lunch on the beach on the south side and went swimming in the sea - the waves were huge and there were massive undercurrents! The northern beaches were we visited second were much calmer, although it seemed that whichever coast we were on we were getting the full benefit of the wind in our faces, and being whipped with sand!!
Due to the weather, it blew quite hard the whole time we were here, we were unable to visit some of the other anchorages.  There is a lovely marine park area just north of Gustavia, which has fantastic diving and snorkelling, but you have to use a mooring buoy, and we didn't want to move unless there was one free, as if not we would have to come back and re-anchor where we started - also if we did get one, we would have to dinghy back and pay for it which again was a bit of a non-starter, next time maybe!! 
Despite the highish wind speed which was easterly as expected, the swell was not as easterly as forecast which led to some more pretty rolly nights.  After 3 nights we were undecided whether to leave or not - we decided to stay and have a lunch time treat the next day and then leave for Saba, as the winds would be calmer then.  Saba is a bit more exposed, so the less wind and swell the better, and as we were heading for an anchorage on the western coast we felt sure that it would provide good shelter against an easterly wind and swell.

 The coolest rental car we have had so far - however despite it being a Mini Cooper, it really struggled with some of the steeper hills even in a very low gear!! 

 A view of the anchorage we couldn't visit this time in Anse Colombier

  John & I at the Port in Gustavia

  Kite boarders on one of the calmer beaches!!

  Each beach has a hand-painted tiled sign, the coke cans are there to be taken and used as ashtrays!!

 Aerial view of the port - you can see of the larger boats!!

End of the runway - you can just see a plane that has taken off




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