St Barts
NORDLYS
David and Annette Ridout
Fri 10 Apr 2009 22:25
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Nevis and St Kitts plus bits and
bobs
17:55N 62:52W
St Barts, 10th April
2009
I have not written a blog for some time now as
there seems very little point in writing unless there has been some interesting
new event in our lives. No one wants to hear blow by blow accounts of our
daily wanderings if nothing new of note takes place. Since I last wrote we
have been busy entertaining visitors. We visited Barbuda again to show
Richard and Ann, my sister and brother-in -law, this lovely island with its
frigate birds. Some of the males were still trying to woo a female so
showed their splendid red sacks, see the blog before this, although most of them
were obviously sexually exhausted and had nothing more than a withered red lump
of skin to show. The chicks were also growing fast.
We spent a lot of time in Antigua mainly due to the
northerly swells which have given so much trouble this year. There
are very few Caribbean anchorages that are immune to these. The wind
on the other hand has abated as have the squalls so we have enjoyed some magical
sailing. Antigua to Barbuda and back. Then Antigua to St Barts and
back to Nevis produced some marvellous sailing with 12 to 17 knots of beam wind
and fairly smooth blue seas.
This brings me on to Nevis and St Kitts, now with
our last lot of visitors, John and Cam. Both new islands for us.
Settled by the British in the 17th century they were important sugar producing
islands and very much the jewels in the crown of our Caribbean
possessions. History throughout these islands is of the French and the
British battling each other for possession. Look behind this and one
realises that these lumps of in many cases scrubby rocks must have had some
value. In the 17th and 18th centuries they certainly did. Sugar
was the main crop with cotton, coconuts and nutmeg also being important.
To produce these crops slaves were necessary as the indigenous Carib Indians
were not up to hard work in the heat. Thus after killing off most of the
Caribs we imported hundreds of African slaves. Some islands never had
plantations and thus have few Afro peoples. The Saints and St Barts are
examples of such islands. Nevis and St Kitts were however the centres
of the slave trade and to this day the vast majority of the people on these
islands are of Afro origin. Where we found them different to other
such islands, St Lucia and Antigua for instance, was in the friendliness of
their peoples. Never did we feel at all threatened and in all cases found
ourselves being made very welcome.
Nevis is a small sleepy place of about 12,000
people and we did a tour with a remarkable Yorkshire lady. T. C. Claxton,
or TC as she likes to be known has lived here for sixteen years, sports bright
almost dayglow dyed red hair and talks with her original Yorkshire accent.
I had to stop myself lapsing back into this lingo of my childhood. She
took us to several of the old plantations that have now been converted into
hotels. We lunched in one with a view to die for and during our four hours
in this ladies company we got to know a lot about life on this island
and about the attitudes of its peoples. Sugar is no longer produced
and their economy is rather precariously dependent upon tourism. One can
only hope these lovely people survive the next few years. One sight she
showed us was the tree under which a British naval captain married a local
heiress. I mean of course the marriage of Captain Horatio Nelson and Fanny
Nisbet. As history tells us she was only rich in local land and
the marriage was not a success.
Moving the few miles across to St Kitts we went
into the marina to avoid the rolling swells that the
anchorages of both islands are infamous for. This in itself was rather fun
as we were alongside one of the day charter catamarans. Her skipper and
crew were a very jolly lot who took to our company. Marriage is a rarity
on these islands and the men tend to drift from liaison to liaison producing
lots of children. This to us rather amoral way of life is well established
and seems to work. I make no judgement. The skipper, a Rastafarian,
was one of 13 children and the eldest of the main 'wife'. He did not know
exactly where he fitted in with the brothers and sisters outside this
relationship. One of the crew was obviously a ladies man and there was
much teasing. The word twins produced much anguish in him.
It sounds rather mundane but I was rather touched when one of them gave me
his St Kitts colours belt and when they all wished us such sincere
goodbyes. It was here we also said goodbye to Cam and John, who had kindly
agreed to fly back to Antigua, thus saving us 45 windward miles! They had
treated us to a lovely lunch in one of the best plantation hotels,
Ottley Plantation. The original owner came from Otley in Yorkshire.
Have a look on the internet. Also Montpelier on Nevis. The latter with its
locally painted frescoes around the pool is truely a place to stay if the
pennies are available.
We had planned to go to Eustacia, a Dutch island
just north of St Kitts, but the promise of a very rolly anchorage due to another
day of northerly swell helped us decide to enjoy a lovely forty mile romp to St
Barts again. On the way we passed Valsheda as she sailed
south. This completely restored old J class yacht made a fantastic sight
as she reached passed us. A mile or two away was Bystander, the
workmanlike motor yacht that goes everywhere with her.
So a few days here and we will cross the final
twenty miles to the French side of St Martin, prepare oursleves and the old lady
for the 4000nm trip home, and then await a favourable weather window
sometime about the beginning of May. Then next stop will either be the
Azores or if things are not looking promising after a week we will go into
Bermuda. When the voyage starts I will write near daily blogs of short
duration so that family and any friends who want to can track our
progress.
Until then au revoir dear readers.
David.
 The tree under which Horatio and Fanny were married
 The pool at Montpelier, one of the best of the old Plantation
Hotels.
 African green velvet monkey. Imported long ago with the
slaves these monkeys
are now seen over much of the islands.
 Taken after lunch in front of the main building of Ottley
Plantation.
 K7, Valsheda powers south. __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 3987 (20090404) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com |