St Kitts part I
Gaviota
Sun 18 May 2008 14:15
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17.13N 62.39W
Whitehouse Bay, St Kitts
We've spent a lot of time in this lovely wide bay on this
peninsular at the southern end of St Kitts. The beach is large stones, so not
popular with anyone except an occasional fisherman, and although it gets
surprisingly rolly at anchor, the waves on the beach are minimal, so landing the
dinghy is a dream - we even found a large stone with a hole in it to tie to
!!
Here's the (sorry, belated as usual) story of what we've done
here over the last 2 weeks:
On Wed 30 April we sailed from Nevis across the narrow straits
to the southern end of St Kitts, into Shitten Bay. No idea why it's called
that - it's lovely - dead quiet, small amout of beach with large stones, steep
lowish cliffs with bleating goats prancing about and pelicans flying around and
diving for fish. The snorkelling is great - some local daytripper
catamarans have set 3 buoys and use them for an hour or two each day, otherwise
we saw no more boats there. Except for a great surprise - we'd just
finished anchoring when we noticed another yacht sailing straight towards us -
we were just about to shout when it came alongside and we realised it was
Manketti, with Brian Egerton, who Syd had encouraged to buy that Hylas whilst we
were at the ARC seminar last year. We'd only seen him briefly during the
ARC as he'd had to go back to the UK as soon as he arrived. Even that day,
he was on his way to the BVIs to get his boat shipped back to the UK so he
couldn't even stop for lunch, but he said he was enjoying the Hylas very much,
as expected, just too many business and personal pressures so he was having
to stay in the UK for the next couple of years. So we had lunch, did
lots of snorkelling (Syd even saw his first underwater turtle) and stayed the
night, it was so peaceful.
The next day we motored into Basseterre, the main town on St
Kitts, anchored outside the little marina and dinghy'd in to town to do the
usual bank, shops, lunch, internet jobs. It was too rolly to stay there
overnight, so we motored/sailed very slowly in light winds with the genoa
up, back down the southern peninsular to Whitehouse
Bay. On the Friday we snorkelled around the wrecks in the bay(which
Annabel found a bit spooky; is she ever going to make a scuba diver?) and went
ashore for a little walk. There's a large salt lake behind this beach,
surrounded by nothing but the scrubby(thorny!) steep hills populated by goats
and a few cows. A new road was built down the peninsular a few years ago,
but just serves the new vehicle ferry to Nevis, however there's quite a lot of
new development starting around it, and several tracks, sometimes even with
street lights run up into the hills. We also noticed the track along from
'our' bay to the next one had been worked on recently, and the sea inlet to the
salt lake had been cleared a bit. Syd commented that it would make a great
marina area, like Rodney Bay and some of the other lagoon-style bays we've
anchored in on other islands.
The dinghy access, tracks and quiet road looked conducive to
biking so on Sunday Syd put the bikes together and we explored the southern end
of the peninsular a bit, finding some fabulous large unpopulated bays, and one
patch of upmarket developent overlooking the straits to Nevis and the
Atlantic. Having had an easy ride mostly on the flat that day, on
the Monday(bank holiday here too) we decided to get as far as we could
up the island. There were several steep hills up and down the peninsular,
but all on the tarmac, so Annabel didn't walk too much and Syd waited
patiently(or maybe glad of the rest...?!) at the top. The last hill came
down into the main development area of Frigate Bay, where there's a large
Marriot hotel with some new and old holiday apartments. Suddenly we were
in America-by-the-sea, with shiny 4x4 vehicles gliding past, pizza restuarants,
banks, a large golf course. Using the normal 'tourist map', the road/track
we were using to keep away from the main road and along the coast somehow turned
into the lovely concrete paths round the golf course, made for the golf buggys
and just right for cycling. We managed to go quite a way through before a
groundsman came and chased us out into another maze of estate roads with
lampposts and no houses. We followed this along, past a REALLY STINKY salt
pond and the island's rubbish dump, back up to the main road. It wasn't
too busy, so we cracked on, up and down hills, enjoying the views out to the
Atlantic, but not particularly scenic inland, hoping to find a nice village cafe
for lunch, but no joy, so we eventually found a bench in the shade and ate our
melting cheese sarnie and Snickers bar. We went on a little further,
getting into a more agricultural area with sugar cane fields (like grass/wheat,
about 5-6ft high), but we couldn't easily see the road on the map which led back
over the hills to Basseterre and as we were mindful of the hills on the
peninsular on the way back to the boat, we didn't fancy one of our long
explorations on roads that didn't exist. And even Annabel was getting a
little tired of tarmac(!!!)(well, the traffic, light as it was, and the
heat). So we slammed back down the road, getting caught by a really heavy
rain shower just as we were starting to look for an ice cream in Frigate Bay,
had a coke at a beach shack there which just gave us enough energy to tackle the
hills on the way back. At least we didn't get any more punctures having
kept on the road all day - forgot to mention that Annabel had 2 after the first
day and Syd 1, so more inner tubes and patches required !!! So not the
most interesting of rides, and we really noticed our lack of fitness, but saw a
few wild monkeys and some fabulous views and marvelled at the amount of
development on the island.
Tuesday 6 May we'd had enough wilderness and the bay was
getting quite rolly, so Syd packed up the bikes and we motored into the little
marina at Basseterre because we wanted to spend quite a bit of time in town on
the internet and maybe investigate the housing developments for potential
investment for Syd. The next day we did a bit of shopping, cleared out of
customs for the next island and Annabel managed to book her tickets on the
internet for her trip back to the UK for a few weeks from Venezuela, whilst Syd
investigated banks, developments and 'new' boats on the internet. Annabel
also found that her bank card had been 'cloned' in Antigua and used in
Atlanta. We'd been told of an ongoing problem with a particular cashpoint
in Antigua, unfortunately just after Annabel had used it. Looking at the
Caribbean cruising websites, several other people we know had been affected, and
one of the people Annabel spoke to at the Nationwide knew about it, but it took
several phone calls which resulted in a cancelled card(and a refund of the false
debits), and we're watching Syd's accounts very carefully. It's
fortunate that Annabel will be able to collect her new card in a few weeks'
time, because we haven't tried picking up post here and don't expect it to
be easy as we don't often stay in one place for more than a week or so, or
spend much time in marinas which often offer post collection services.
Such are the joys of long-term travel ! How would we manage without the
internet ? We treated ourselves to a meal out and in talking to the
restuarant owner afterwards, discovered a bit more about the development
programme for the peninsular, including a marina in the salt lake just where we
thought it should be !
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