St Kitts 17:16.75N 62:43.00W
Lotus
Tue 26 Jan 2010 15:00
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After spending the morning cycling up and down
the hills of Antigua, John and I waited for Guy and Ann to arrive,
Pina Colada in hand, in Admirals bar; an elegantly restored 18th
century workshop.
Their two week holiday did not get off to a great start as the skies turned grey and the
heavens opened. Eventually, by early afternoon, the rain stopped and we
were able to sail round to Jolly Harbour, on the other side of Antigua. On
the way we had a fishing nightmare; we hooked a fish but
unfortunately didn't have enough line on the reel to let it run, so John
tightened the clutch, in an attempt to slow him down, the line
broke and the fish escaped, with our favourite pink lure and most of
our fishing line. Seconds later half of the rod fell overboard and
disappeared into the drink. We were not happy bunnies!
 Next day we set out for St Kitts, a 40 mile sail.
We didn't get the fastest start, what with having to clear customs and fill the
water tanks so we were hard pushed to get there
in daylight. We had some company three quarters of the way
across, a humpback whale surfaced about 20 foot away and had a good look at
us. He re surfaced at the side of the boat a couple of minutes later and
then fell behind. We could see him and some of his
buddies for quite some time surfing down the waves just under the waters
surface.
We arrived in Shitten Bay, St Kitts with minutes to
spare before darkness descended. Shitten Bay, aptly named for the Austin
brothers who, true to form besmirched the crystal clear waters, luckily this was
after Ann and I had our snorkel. We moved five miles up the coast to
Basseterre to clear customs. When we went
ashore John got talking to a local guy, 'Stan the man', who ran a tourist
fishing boat, next thing we know we're being taken to the local fishing shop to
buy a rod. However, the shop was small and only had one suitable rod which
was way over our budget so 'Stan the man' whisked us off to his house where he
gave us two of his old rods which were currently in use as bean poles in
his garden. After saying hello to Stan the mans six barking
dogs, looking at his eight scrapped cars throughout his extensive
gardens (this didn't seem a particularly high number for the area), hearing all
about his Canadian wife who went back home to bury her parents and count
her inheritance back in August and hasn't been seen since and filling
our rucksack with mangoes and oranges plucked from his fruit
trees, he took us back to the port via a popular viewpoint where
monkeys were lazing and there was a great view of St Kitts with both the
Atlantic and Caribbean sea.
  Next day, Ann sat in a bandstand for two hours,
whilst a big black woman plaited her hair and sucked her teeth (her own , not
Ann's). We left her to it and visited the local KFC.
 Onwards to Saba, a long sail to a steep sided rocky
island which boasts some of the best diving in the Caribbean. Our new rod,
courtesy of Stan the man, came up trumps when we caught a Wahoo, a
white fish that tasted superb with breadcrumbs, a bit like posh fish
fingers.
 We were kicked off our initial mooring, in the
pitch black by a local dive boat so we moved onto another mooring
which we had spied earlier. We knew we were on the wrong colour mooring
buoy but we couldn't be bothered to move to it earlier as
we thought no one else would pitch up once the sun had gone down. We
had a very rolly night and not much sleep was had by anyone.
Turtles were seen on the reef where we snorkelled
and John had his first encounter with a shark on our dive at Diamond
Rock. It was only a tiddler and didn't stay around for long. The
reef, a coral encrusted rock that protruded from the sandy bottom at about 20m,
was full of life and amazing colours. Onwards to St Marten!
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