Thurs & Fri – 1^st & 2^nd May

On Thursday Balvenie and ourselves sailed through to the main harbour in Charlotte Amalie to make sure we got good spots for the carnival and fireworks. It proved impossible to obtain information about the no-go zone where yachts were not allowed to anchor as they would be in the line of fire of the fireworks;  we eventually tracked down that we should be contacting the Department of Planning and Natural Resources (not the Coastguard, whose telephone number puts you through to the airport or the Port Authority!  Well this is the Caribbean, mon!) but none of the 9 telephone extensions were answered and there was no switchboard.   So we made educated guesses and dropped our anchors finding ourselves surrounded by a number of boats that we know well.

Very little sleep was possible that night as we are moored directly opposite the main Carnival sound stage and we were blasted until 0300 hours by quite the loudest music we have ever heard – anywhere. But there is no point being upset after all this is a full blown Caribbean carnival weekend and we chose to anchor here so it was just our bad luck.

On Friday morning we went ashore to watch the Children’s parade which was great fun. The steel bands were so exuberant and they were generally housed in purpose built double deck trailers as they belted out some wonderful numbers.  But the majorettes were the ones you had feel a little sorry for.  Generally they were very young kids dressed impossibly for the event with little real allowance being made for the searing heat and lack of wind today. These troupes from different islands and schools were each trailing behind vehicles loaded with quite the largest sound systems we have seen. Periodically the vehicle stops and blasts out the requisite tracks whilst the kids do their routines, but the volume levels are extraordinary and even in the watching crowd we could feel our bodies being assaulted by the booming bass.  As Mark from Balvenie commented, ‘It is no wonder they play their music so loud generally as they must all be stone deaf by the age of 5!

We then went back to the boats and we invited Balvenie and Emma Louise to come round for sundowners at 1800 hours. But plans to catch up on any sleep now were dashed by a whole series of visitors to Serafina as dinghy after dinghy came over to chat about various things.  Then Savarna called on the radio as they were on their way from the BVI’s to join us again and so we welcomed them to the anchorage and added them to the guest list.

Drinks were briefly interrupted after dark whilst we watched a police launch with its blue lights flashing circling around Moosetracks, who we knew to be not on board, but having a BBQ on Out of Africa. We called Devin up and told him what was happening and he came over in his dinghy to chat to the police who had waited until dark to come out and warn boats to move from this area as they were going to be too close to the fireworks tomorrow night! There then followed a comical 15 minutes as the police boat then went over to Savarna to warn them.  We shone our search light on the police boat and finally managed to explain to them that Savarna’s crew were on Serafina and they would move in the morning. Then before we could explain further they set off to the empty Balvenie…you get the picture now I am sure. So the outcome was that we are all moving in the morning to get a decent distance away from where it seems they are going to moor the firework barge.