A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back - First foot on Cuban territory

First foot on Cuban territory

A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back

Sam and Alex Fortescue

Mon 14 Mar 2011 18:50

Team Summer Song has uprooted the anchor and slid a few miles farther north to Basse Terre, the capital of St Kitts. Alex's (much coveted) new mobile phone, brought out by HQ last month, went off at 7am with an alarm noise that we at first completely failed to identify. Nonetheless, by about 20 past, we were on our way. Matters were complicated by a later than expected night, thanks to a neighbouring Belgian boat in our anchorage. We had met the couple, John and ingrid, onboard as we traipsed from one office to another in Nevis, and they invited us on to their Moody 36 for some exceedingly welcome drinks.

Progress towards Basse Terre was impeded by some seriously heavy rain, temporarily blotting out everything around us and turning then turning the landscape ashen grey. The First Mate was at the helm for the first downpour, leaving the skipper watching smugly from the shelter of the sprayhood. A reckoning was not long in coming however, as the clouds opened to an even greater extent while I was manoeuvring into an anchorage off the cruise ship quay. For a second, all but the most colourful houses on the seafront disappeared. My shorts are still dripping.

In spite of it all, we made it to the Cuban 'Embassy' by shortly after 9am, expecting to find a lengthy queue of eager Communism buffs, waving impressive-looking paperwork and membership cards for the International Communist Party. Instead, we found ourselves standing outside a newish looking bungalow, painted bright orange. There were no flags or revolutionary art visible from the street. But inside, a buxom-looking Cuban lady was sitting over a desk in a slightly damp basement. She was surprised to see us, I think, and we felt somewhat oppressed by the reams of revolutionary literature that were piled on every flat surface. But after establishing that Alex spoke Spanish, she and her colleague proved to be delightfully helpful characters. So far, we've only written our names, passport numbers etc once, and haven't had to tell them much about Summer Song. The whole experience makes Nevis' bureaucracy look like the Communist behemoth. As the lady insisted, "It's so small here. Cuba is much more interesting."

We have to wait until Wednesday for our tourist cards, which means prolonging our stay in St Kitts. As on many of the islands we've been to, there is a funny, dozy torpor hanging over the town in the absence of cruise ships on the docks, spilling their thousands of eager passengers into the duty-free diamond shops and waiting taxis for a bargain $75 island tour. Sometimes the locals just take the day off when there are no ships in; sometimes they insist on cruise ship prices; but here we managed to haggle a taxi driver down to something more sensible, so we're off on a rainforest tour tomorrow. In the meantime, Alex is finding it hard to sit still at the prospect of our first cinema outing since seeing the execrable 'Salt' in Lorient, Brittany back in August. Expect a detailed review of The King's Speech tomorrow...

Summer Song rocking in her Little Bay anchorage