Log of Sea Wings

29 March 2009

Anse Deshaies, Guadeloupe

At Anchor

16 – 18.3N

61 – 48.5W

ROLL, ROLL, ROLL YOUR BOAT

In Islands That Touch The Clouds

Islands that touch the clouds. Not an original thought, it was borrowed from Chris Doyle’s cruising guide to the Leeward Islands, but a beautiful description of the volcanic islands of Saba, Statia, St Kitts, Redonda and Montserrat. The peaks of these beautiful and lush islands are rarely clear of clouds and make them the most distinctive of the Leeward Islands.

As beautiful as they are, they all share one negative in common, vulnerability to a north swell. With the exception of several small coves in St Kitts, there is no protection in a north swell and it usually makes anchoring untenable. Unfortunately, in 2009 the strong Christmas winds and an unusually prevalent and very strong north swell have lingered and have made visiting these islands quite difficult.

We were able to spend a comfortable visit in Nevis, but St Kitts was a different matter, Saba was limited to a day trip, and we were not able to get to Statia or Montserrat at all. We will catch them on a return trip, but St Kitts and Saba were spectacular.

Almost a week of strong easterly winds kept us in a cove on the south end of St Kitts with winds gusting over 30 kts. The whole south end is essentially undeveloped, although it has been purchased by developers who intend to turn the whole end of the island into a (very) high end project, including a golf course, marina, hotel, and many private residences stretched out over the steep mountainsides of southern St Kitts. Our timing was good as the only construction started is the golf course and a small sales office so it is still natural, for a while at least. Our days here were spent hiking down the road to a windward side beach and up and down the dirt roads cut into the hillsides that mark out the first phase lots. The skies were clear, the wind howling and the views were spectacular. Too bad that it has to go the way of ‘progress’ as it is a truly beautiful place. Maybe the economy will kill the project, who knows?

Soon the winds subsided and we moved a few miles up the coast to Basseterre, the main city on St Kitts. We found it a lively city with the hubs of activity being the cruise ship dock for tourists and the bus/ferry terminal favored by the locals. For those of you contemplating cruising the Caribbean, a few opinioned words about cruise ship destination islands. While the cruise ship trade is vital to the economy of the Caribbean, the docking locations for these ships are the bane of those cruising in yachts (not mega yachts, who often dock near cruise ship docks). Every docking location has infrastructure designed specifically to cater to the cruise ship passenger and is more akin to an American/European shopping mall than the Caribbean island on which it is located. At every location you will find the same jewelry shops, electronics shops, duty free shops, bars and restaurants all within easy walking distance of the ship. There will also be a gaggle of taxis waiting to spirit them off to more remote establishments, again specifically set up for the cruise ship passenger. It is at the dock area that you will also find the American chain restaurants such as KFC, Domino’s, McDonald’s, etc.

Now if this is what you fancy as your exposure to the Caribbean, be careful to time your arrival to the cruise ship schedules, as when the cruise ships are not in port, almost every business targeting the cruise ship passenger is closed. In other words, if a ship is in port Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the shops will be closed Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Like ghost towns.

Fortunately, life on the islands goes on whether the ships are in or not and by traveling only a few blocks away from the cruise ship docks you can join the local life and begin to truly enjoy the islands. Basseterre is a typical example. At the cruise ship dock awaiting the passengers and their expendable income is a development called Port Zante. It was built exclusively for the cruise trade and is sort of like a St Kitts Disney World. The atmosphere is totally fabricated or recreated. Normally it is deserted save for roaming security guards and the odd yacht cruiser sitting outside closed restaurants or bars using their wifi hot sports to Skype home or catch up on their email. When a ship is in, all the shops open and a reggae band sets up to add island color and it all closes back down when the ships leave at 5pm.

Only a few blocks away life goes on, immune to the ships coming and going. We have found the best, most memorable places by asking a convenient local where do they take lunch, or buy their groceries, or relax after work, or buy their music, etc. As we are still out of place old white folks, the first response is to direct us to the cruise ship haunts like Port Zante. Normally, after assuring them that those are the last places we want to go and that it is their hangouts we are interested in, we find ourselves mingling into the local culture and color. Three blocks up and three over from the dock we were directed to a fantastic little lunch counter where we had a fantastic meal of organically grown local vegetables, the ubiquitous rice and beans, and island style sweet and hot chicken. Only three four blocks over from the cruise ship docks we found the bus/ferry terminal which was surrounded by small stands featuring local food and very cold, very inexpensive beer, the local grocery stores and vegetable vendors lining the streets. All of which was made more enjoyable by the boisterous comings and goings of the islanders as they went about their daily business.

It was not that many years ago that we were on a cruise ship going through these same islands. We always tried to go on snorkeling or diving excursions to get away from the Disney World of the docks and thought we got to see the ‘real’ islands by doing so. Now, when we see the passengers flow into the docks and excursions set up just for them and only hours later climb back aboard and sail away into the dusk we fully realize how much we missed when we were them……..and how glad we are to have come back and walked those extra blocks.

One excursion we enjoyed on St Kitts was a trip to a restored fortress at the top of Brimstone Hill near the north end of the island. It is elevated over 300 meters and is not only interesting as an historical site, but has commanding views of both St Kitts, the Caribbean Sea but its neighbor island, Statia, as well. Brimstone hill is 8-10 miles from Basseterre so we hopped on the local bus and headed north. It should be noted here that a bus in the islands is a privately owned mini van carrying up to 15 passengers that hurtles around the island at break neck speed with the windows open and music blaring from its speakers. Our driver/owner this trip had particularly good reggae going and gave us name of the disc and artist when he dropped us at the base of the hill. It was then a two mile climb up to the fort but the views were worth the effort. It was a breezy, clear day and we spent hours crawling through one of the best restored forts in the Caribbean, currently a British Heritage site and under consideration as a World Heritage site. But it was the views that kept us lingering, nothing short of spectacular.

As we got back to the boat, we were introduced to the thing most dreaded in a cruisers life, swell in the anchorage. Swell is a tricky little devil. What looks like a glassy smooth sea with just the lightest of swell can rock your boat from gunnel to gunnel with ease, if the swell is counter the direction that your boat is anchored. We were welcomed home by a swell of 2-3 feet coming in at about 60 degrees to the bow and the boat was rolling so much that it was difficult just to board her from the dinghy. She was rolling at least 15 to 20 degrees each way, things were flying around as we were not buttoned up for sea, you could not move around without holding onto something, and each group of swells was no more than 10 seconds apart. Once it started it lasted three days without any letup.

The swell was at least off the bow and ultimately we were able to secure a line to the anchor chain and lead it back to a winch in the stern of the boat and winch the stern around so that the bow faced into the swell instead of the wind. Now the motion was bow to stern (46 ft) instead of side to side (14 ft) so it was almost pleasant in comparison. We congratulated ourselves on our cleverness as we watched boat after boat anchor and then leave in less than an hour, unable to stand the rolling motion. What we failed to recognize was that if the swell was aft of the beam, this would not work and we too would still be at the mercy of the swell.

Since this introduction we have looked more carefully at not only future anchorages, but where we had been in the past as we had not experienced this problem before. The fact was that, quite by accident, we had been in some of the best protected (from swell) anchorages in the northern Caribbean. Now that we were in more normal locations, the problem was one that we had to be concerned about at all times. So we looked at the guide books which are about the only source of information but are sometimes of little help. As the guidebooks are trying to sell ads as well as books, a questionable anchorage where the author has a lot of advertising clients may be listed as “can be rolly”. That doesn’t sound all that bad but the literal translation is “if the swell is from the wrong direction you will be puking your guts out 24/7 until you pull anchor and leave or the swell subsides, which ever comes first”. Some locations are such well known horrors that the authors have to tell the truth and these are listed as “can be untenable in a north swell”. Two examples of this are Saba and Statia. That is why our next planned stop was Statia but as there had been a lingering north swell well into the spring we skipped it and headed directly to Sint Maarten, hoping to catch it on the way back down south. That is why when you hear a cruiser say he “could not” go to whatever island, it often simply means the swell was from the wrong direction.

But trying to second guess swell is a black art. Almost all recognized anchorages in the Caribbean are on the west or south sides of the island. That is because the prevalent winds are from the ENE and, more often that not, swell will run in generally the same direction. But it is not quite that simple as swell is often redirected as it comes around the ends of an island, or in many harbors you have to consider rebound swell. So to recap: You could be anchored on the north end on the west side of an island during an east wind and swell. As the swell comes around the north end it is turned in a more southerly direction. As it travels SE it hits the southern end of the harbor which just happens to stick out farther west than the north end. The redirected hits the end of the harbor and rebounds SW directly into the harbor and rolls your boat violently from side to side. Ah, the joys of cruising. And that is why when a cruising boat is only rolling 5 degrees side to side it is housing a happy and contented crew that is sleeping soundly all night long.

Fair Winds and Quiet Anchorages,

Lew and Lyn

s/v Sea Wings