Week 49: St. Kitts to Guadeloupe (87nm)

Back down to just the two of us on Serenity, we set sail for Montserrat where we toured the island with S/V Azimuth, and then continued on to Guadeloupe.

Captain’s log

7th Apr: An early flight home meant an even earlier start to dinghy Tish and Obie ashore for their taxi, after which it was time to look at the weather and options for the week ahead. There looked like a good option to get to Montserrat the following day, so we decided to head down to Nevis to make the leg as short as possible and also see if there was any customs presence on a Sunday. As luck would have it, a very friendly man was manning the desks and so we got all the paperwork done with limited waiting around, and then it was back to Serenity to prep her for the passage – good news, the rig is currently showing no more signs of damage 🙂

8th Apr: Montserrat was 35nm away on a fairly tight angle to the wind and so we made an early start to take the stress out of the sail. As we left Nevis, we were hailed on the radio by Azimuth (another couple of cruisers who we had seen a number of times around St Kitts and were also headed for Montserrat) to invite us to join them on a tour they had booked on Montserrat the next day. We were about a mile ahead of them at the time, and so my competitive side immediately resurfaced for first to arrive in Montserrat. Serenity was sailing the best we’d ever managed upwind, but whilst they weren’t pointing as high as us they were going a good 1-1.5 knots faster and slowly clawed ahead of us over the course of the day. We were pretty happy with this result as they were on a slightly larger and ‘better’ sailing boat that us (a ketch), but were delighted when we caught up with them on arrival to find out they had motor-sailed there whole way – a massive win for Serenity and the new rig tensions from the FKG guys!

9th Apr: Our tour was scheduled to start as soon as we had cleared into Montserrat, and after the completion of numerous (often redundant?) forms we could leave the port compound and meet our remarkably spry 70 year-old guide Joe. He had lived on the island his entire life, and had prepared an amazing tour of the island supported by hundreds of ‘before’ photos on his iPad that were an impactful contrast with the post eruption version. Highlights were seeing the famous Air Studios and the now buried capital city of Plymouth, and it was entertaining to spend more time with Lisa, Steven and Sienna of Azimuth over sundowners before they set sail for Antigua the next day.

10th Apr: We had a few more days before the wind favoured our sail to Guadeloupe, and so we made the decision to upgrade our scenery to the nearby Rendezvous Bay – aptly named given that our arrival predicated a further four yachts joining by the end of the day. After some successes in paddleboard and window leak repairs, we then rowed ashore and had an enjoyable walk along the beach. Movie night was Lock Stock, and Laura has unfortunately developed an unhealthy taste for Cockney rhyming slang that may prove terminal.

11th Apr: The number one priority for our second day in Rendezvous was to hunt down some lion fish that Laura had spotted the previous day – this non-native species has been wreaking havoc in the Caribbean seeing as they are highly venomous and have no natural predators. We bagged a couple of small ones that unfortunately weren’t big enough to bother grilling, but were pleased that we could help keep this pest under control. We then had a quiet afternoon on Serenity and an early night in advance of our early start for Guadeloupe the next day.

12th Apr: Laura took the skipper reins for this leg, and had a tricky call to make on the departure time as, whilst the weather was forecast to improve during the day, we needed enough time to cover the 40+nm to get to our anchorage in Deshaies before it got dark. As we sailed around the top of Montserrat it was not looking good since our GPS was forecasting an arrival of 11pm, and Laura started to doubt herself – o ye of little faith, the wind direction changed exactly on schedule and we had a rollicking upwind sail averaging close to six knots and getting us into Deshaies around 4pm. It would have been sooner, but one of the fittings for our genoa failed in the last hour (cause TBD) and meant we had to motor sail the final few miles at a reduced rate, but we were just happy to be able to park up in this tricky bay with plenty of daylight left.

13th Apr: Welcome to the world’s windiest anchorage (or at least that we’ve visited) – we’ve regularly had gusts over 30 knots since arriving and it can feel at times like living in a wind tunnel. On the plus side, the bay is full of what we have come to term ‘French Shabby Chic Charm’, which is probably why the TV show ‘Death in Paradise’ was filmed here. I came down with some man flu that certainly made me feel like death at times (I’ve self diagnosed it as Dengue Fever without any supporting evidence), but Laura assures me I’ll live and proposed an apparently common local Caribbean cure of pizza and an early night for my ails.

Story of the week

As we’ve mentioned previously, meeting other cruisers has been one of the highlights since taking up our nomadic lifestyle, and when we visit new bays we will often have a look around to see if there are any friendly / interesting looking boats nearby. In our many stays at Whitehouse Bay the previous week, we’d noticed another boat seemed to be visiting nearly as frequently as we were – the yacht was conspicuous for the variety of water sports equipment across the decks (paddleboard, kayak, sailing dinghy and tender), and as we hadn’t been able to see it’s name we started to refer to the owners and Mr & Mrs Watersports. Since we had guests aboard Serenity, we didn’t end up introducing ourselves to them, but one of our highlights whilst staying there was watching them paddleboard ashore twice a day to exercise their dog (who didn’t seem super keen about the paddleboard concept…).

Arriving in Nevis, we were therefore pleasantly surprised to see them sailing in to take a nearby mooring buoy at the same time, and I made a mental note to say hi once I had sorted out our business at customs. It turned out they had the same activity planned, and since the customs process was very much on the laid-back end of the spectrum I had plenty of time to chat with Lisa and Stephen (of S/V Azimuth). It turned out we were both heading for Monserrat the next day and so agreed to see each other on the other side. As we were then leaving the following morning, Stephen called us up on the VHF to ask if we wanted to join them on an tour of Monserrat they had booked – we had already discussed organising a tour ourselves and so we gladly accepted the opportunity to share the cost without any effort on our side :).

Having arrived safely in Monserrat, the next morning they gave us a lift ashore so that we could quickly clear customs and get going on the tour. Dealing with multiple boats arriving at the same time is not something Monserrat iss geared up for, but we eventually provided the same information to the numerous interested parties and were then free to leave the port. A smiling man approached us at the exit and said his car was nearby, but was strangely evasive in answering the question as to whether his name was Joe (the name of tour guide Lisa had booked). Eventually he conceded that he wasn’t Joe, but advised that we go with him as Joe hadn’t been seen around the island for a number of days. Thankfully, Joe picked this moment to arrive and disabuse this man of the stories of his demise and we gratefully got into the back of his car.

It turns out Joe had been doing tours of the island for a long time (over forty years) and took a great deal of pride in his work. He spent the first 15 minutes explaining that we weren’t on a tour, rather this would be a ‘conference’, and as such would be accompanied by a ‘PowerPoint.’ Laura and I inwardly groaned at this flashback to our working lives, but thankfully a Montserrat PowerPoint is not a lengthy slide presentation. Instead, Joe had taken a huge amount of time to gather photos of the island from before the volcano started erupting on an iPad, and as such he was able to help us see just how much the landscape had changed in the intervening years. This was a truly powerful tool to see and Lisa had made a great choice in our guide (although it would have been even better if he had kept the driving and ‘PowerPoint’ as discrete activities.

Highlights of the day included visit to the volcano observatory, a wander round at Air Studios (George Martin’s isolated recording studio) that hosted stars including Dire Straits, Elton John, Michael Jackson, The Police and The Rolling Stones), a drive through Joe’s old village that had now been abandoned to the jungle, and a dusty tour round the now buried capital of Plymouth. This last part was especially striking as the majority of the town was buried by pyroclastic flows as parts of the volcano dome collapsed in 1997, leaving just the upper floors of the tallest buildings visible to mark what had been.

After five hours on the road we were ready for lunch and beer, and so we bid farewell to Joe and found a cafe where swapped some cruiser stories and learnt a bit more about Lisa and Steven, a who were a fellow Brit / Yank couple. They had been cruising a few years longer than us, and we were able to pick their brains on upcoming places to visit that has already proved valuable. The conversation continued when they kindly hosted us aboard Azimuth that evening, where we also got to meet Sienna, their lovable Rhodesian Ridgeback.

Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye at that point, as they were headed off to Antigua the following day whilst we were staying put waiting for a weather window to head to Guadeloupe. It is often the way with these cruiser meetups, as the same nomadic lifestyle that brings you together then pulls you apart. Comparing itineraries with them suggested that our paths might cross later this season / the next so we swapped contact details and will certainly look out for them on the AIS!

Parting thoughts

We certainly learnt a huge amount about Montserrat on our tour with Joe, and Laura and I were both shocked to discover how inaccurate our perception of the volcanic eruption was. Although my understanding was limited by my youth (volcanic activity started in 1995), I had thought that the devastation on the island had been caused by one or two specific eruptions. In fact, the volcanic activity that began in nearly 25 years ago was an ongoing danger to islanders for the next 15 years and is still ongoing to this day (albeit at a significantly reduced level). Considering how one’s life would be affected by the constant threat of a volcanic eruption for that period of time was really sobering, and it is remarkable how many people stayed / have returned to the island.

As it stands, the southern part of the island is still designated as an exclusion zone and this is unlikely to change any time soon (despite numerous people’s land and homes slowly deteriorating with abandonment). Meeting the folks that lived there helped give a new meaning to the word ‘stoic’ – as an example, Joe somehow manages to enjoy the following Jimmy Buffet song about the island!