St. Martin: Home away from Home?

Barbuda was our last real stop before arriving in St. Martin, on February 3^rd. As always we enjoyed our pretty and peaceful environment in Low Bay. There seemed to be more sailboats than last January, but we didn’t feel crowded. Once in a while, we took a break from work, for a walk on the 11 mile beach, sinking into the soft sand up till our ankles. Darwin loved it here, we missed his joyful presence, and this time around, the weather was just wonderful, even a bit chilly to swim.

One afternoon, I convinced Mark to join me in the dinghy towards one of the reefs. He remained in the rubber boat, bopping around, enjoying the sunshine, while I braved the cool water and snorkeled around for a bit, seeing multiple colorful fish on the damaged reefs and two stingrays. On the way back to Irie, we passed over large patches of grass. We could see big white spots from above the water and I joked that they were probably all conch. Mark urged me to put my mask and snorkel back on to check it out. Indeed! Tons of conch!

Within seconds, I donned my fins again and went diving for dinner, only picking the adult ones with a big lip. Twenty minutes later, I found enough sea creatures for a few meals. We felt happy and successful to finally find some food in nature. Every fishing attempt this season has failed miserably. Even worse: we lost all our lures in the progress! Once back aboard, Mark cut the animals out of their pretty shells and cleaned them up a bit. They would turn into delicious meals over the following weeks.

Now we are back in St. Martin with mixed feelings. It is the third time we will be spending four to five months in Simpson Bay Lagoon, focusing on our business and other work. The Wirie “factory” is back in production. The list of boat projects is long again and so are the chore and the grocery list. On the other hand, it is great to see all our friends again and spend some fun evenings together.

Mark and I also have a wedding to plan and our friend Karmen, who is an aspiring travel and wedding photographer (www.meanderingmoments.com) is practicing on us, as we speak. So, just like previous years, it is all about finding the perfect balance between work and pleasure. St. Martin is not a bad place to achieve such a thing!

On the Way to St. Martin: Antigua and Barbuda

After our unfriendly episode in Jolly Harbour, checking into Antigua in its capital St. John’s was a more pleasant, albeit slow and slightly inconvenient matter. We dealt with customs and immigration near the cruise ship dock and then had to take the dinghy to the “big ships wharf” to deal with Port Authority and pay EC $50 (US$20) for a cruising permit. This fee used to be EC$ 30 (US$ 12) last year. The town itself has nothing special to offer. Even the 2400 cruise ship passengers avoided it and planned other activities. A visit to the church seemed to be worthwhile, but the nice looking building was under construction, so access was prohibited.

Our plan was to stay in St. John’s harbor for a couple of days to work online -as always- and then move around the corner to the north shore for some peace and quiet over the weekend. Unfortunately, because of an over-presence of an Antigua company’s strong and inaccessible WiFi signals (present wherever you go on the island but luckily not as strong everywhere), Mark and I couldn’t connect to any of the weaker signals because of the interference. Quite an annoying experience if you rely on internet for urgent business matters. The result was that we had to hunt for another bay with decent WiFi, which we found in Deep Bay.

Deep Bay is a beautiful and relatively calm anchorage with a nice beach and pretty surroundings. A wreck in the bay offers good snorkeling, but because of the heavy trade winds this time of the year, the water was cloudy and the visibility non-existent. A walk to the ruins of fort Barrington offers a nice view of the ocean, the lagoon, St. John’s Harbour and the hilly shores. We enjoyed spending some days there and liked the view out of our office. The only “disturbances” came in the form of loaded day charter catamarans and a pirate ship full of cheery cruise ship tourists, multiple times a day.

Two hours of motoring into strong head winds brought us in between the reefs and the northern shore of Antigua to Long Island with attractive Jumby Beach. Palm trees line the sand, but the many man-built structures really assure you that you are anchored off a fancy resort. After one night, we decided to check out the only settlement in the area: the town of Parham. We explored the local fishing village and unexpectedly found a decent supermarket. The beer was cheap and Mark and I joined a bunch of locals outside the store to sit, drink, watch and be part of the scene.

It was Friday night and we hadn’t eaten out for ages, so we decided to try out Sugar Apple Alley, the big attraction in town. Only, we were the only customers. We started with drinks and saw the humongous speakers arrive. “Aha, they must be planning quite the party” we thought. After another hour, people stopped by to take out food and that was that. We ordered our meals and got served by very friendly employees. When it was obvious that nothing more would be going on, we left the place and dinghied back to Irie, anchored all by herself near the mangroves.

Our next stop was Great Bird Island, part of the “outer islands’ in the North Sound. You have to dodge a few reefs to get there, but it is so worthwhile. Little green islands linger everywhere and the water is clear and pretty. Not a lot of sailboats venture out here, so it is quiet and peaceful. A little bit of swell does make it in, but the anchorage is comfortable enough. And, you can always move towards one of the other, more protected islands, if the light is good to see the reefs.

Great Bird Island is a joy to explore. There is a path to the top with a grand view (if the sun is behind you; better in the morning) and two remote beaches. The snorkeling is OK on the reefs, which are mostly damaged. During the weekend, and possibly other days as well, local boats bring in hordes of tourists between 10am and 4pm. Luckily when you’re there on your own vessel, you can visit whenever you want. This is a nice place to be for a while, but, unfortunately for us, a weekend is only two days and we had to get back to work.

The hunt for internet started again and we tried to anchor in a few places, unsuccessfully, before returning to Deep Bay by afternoon, all frustrated and annoyed to have wasted another half a day. Communicating with Taiwan (where it is twelve hours later) was out of the question now. We wonder more and more whether we will be able to keep this lifestyle up. Running a business professionally and the way we want and cruising seem to be an impossible combination.

When the wind subsided a bit and the sea state improved, it was time for Irie and her crew to make the fun crossing to Barbuda, one of our most favorite places in the Caribbean. We were flying along at 7 knots, with one reef in, getting splashed multiple times by higher waves. No luck fishing again. On the contrary, we lost one hook from one lure and our last decent lure. I guess they do bite; we just don’t seem to be able to catch ‘em! With food, supplies and water running low, we will reach St. Martin in no time. But, in the meantime, we will work in our office with the nicest view of them all! And, try to do some fun stuff as well, this weekend…

Barbuda: A Peaceful Place in the Caribbean

When Mark and I left Guadeloupe northbound, we had two options: go “through the middle” with a visit to Montserrat and a short stop in St. Kitts and Nevis, or sail to Antigua and Barbuda for a few weeks. The volcano on Montserrat was acting up, with ash being spit out on boats in the vicinity, followed by days of cleaning up for the owners. That, and the fact that visiting Antigua and Barbuda on the way north is easier than on the way south, made us decide to go this route.

We had heard a lot of nice things about Barbuda and this island was our main goal, but first, we spent two nights in Antigua, where it is easier to check in and out. We anchored in Falmouth Harbour with the big objective to visit Nelson’s Dockyard National Park. This Heritage site of restored colonial buildings houses shops and businesses and creates a good feel for the old days. There is a short walk to fort ruins from where you have a nice view of English Harbor and its many anchored boats. This area is also very popular with the mega yachts and mega they are. During the day your neck gets stiff from looking up the immense, tall masts and at night the sky is dotted with red lights so planes don’t crash into them.

The day we sailed to the sister island Barbuda, was pretty much perfect for this. We followed the west coast of Antigua, noticing quite a few attractive bays near shore and once we hit open water, the wind was a steady 15 knots on the beam (side). Our little Irie was pushed forward at about 7 knots and life was Irie! After cruising along for a couple of hours, our clothes pins snapped, meaning we caught a fish, or some other big thing. When Mark reeled the heavy hand line in, we saw a huge barracuda appear. In his struggle to get free, he had caught our other hand line, creating a giant mess. We managed to get the extra line off him, but needed to release him by cutting the hook. Nobody wanted to get close to those giant teeth and take the hook out. Then, when I pulled the other, damaged line in, something tugged on it… Totally unexpected, we had captured a tuna! Within a minute, we let go of one fish and caught another. Thank you, Mother Nature!

The tuna came in handy the following days, since we didn’t provision in the expensive French islands before visiting “remote” Barbuda. It fed us for three meals, including a sushi dinner. Barbuda is one of the few places in the Caribbean that is very low and therefore hard to see from a distance. While other, more mountainous islands are visible from 20, 30 or even 40 miles away, we didn’t spot Barbuda until we were within 5 miles of its shores. Once safely anchored, all we could see was sand, brush and water.

We spent our first night near Cocoa Point on Barbuda’s southwest coast. The long, quiet beach there has very soft sand in which you sink up to your ankles. When the wind picked up, we moved to the south coast, where the water is very protected. We had to maneuver through some reefs to find our preferred spot and got settled for about a week. Walks on shore revealed nothing more than barren land with sand, rocks and brush. There are a couple of salt ponds and nice views from a sand dune. Spanish Point offers a good look out over the crashing waves. Wild donkeys, horses and chicken roam the area and make up the other life to be found in the vicinity.

Low Bay on the west coast of the island is situated along an 11 mile stretch of pinkish sand. We expected other boats there, but in contrast to the other areas with a maximum of five boats, there was only one here: Irie! The beach was ours and we thoroughly enjoyed the solitude and the long walks with Darwin. Mark and I needed this little vacation away from it all to prepare ourselves for the busy times to come in St. Martin. Our stay in Barbuda truly charged our batteries and the fact that we were out of propane gas, fresh food, toothpaste, paper towels and other necessities didn’t matter that much. At least not for a few days.

On the first day of February we sailed our last long trip in pretty light winds. We made it to St. Barth before nightfall, saw jumping whales along the way and caught our first mahi mahi (dorado). The following day, we reached the familiar lagoon in St. Martin and reunited with many friends, eager to join the fish feast on Irie. It is great to see this whole group of sailing friends again and have a good time. Another working era has arrived and we will be doing just that for about three months before picking up the cruising life again. And, in the evenings, there are plenty of opportunities to socialize!