Monday, March 25, 2013

St Martin to St Barts...and on to St Kitts!

Our first day on the boat was interesting.....
First we got to explore our cabin.......rather a tight fit! The Citizen M hotel at Schiphol airport was  luxurious in comparison!




The bed was raised above a comfortable height to get in, resulting in a lot of interesting gymnastics getting in or out!  However we had one of the 2 forward cabins, the ones at the back of the boat, while larger, were rather claustrophobic with very little headroom!





We had to stow everything away and fill up with water before leaving the marina.....
Then on to St Barts.



I should at this point say that this was my very first sailing trip!
The time to St Barts was 2 to 3 hours. We hit a squall, but there wasn't much wind so we had to motorsail most of the way.  I quickly learnt that I didn't need to panic when the skipper was not at the wheel........




 once the SAT NAV was set it was basically on autopilot!!

And then the wind came up and we went to sailing mode...... a lot quieter than when the engine was on........ but the boat did tip over rather alarmingly... at least, for me!

We arrived in St Barts and explored Gustavia a little.... nice shops!  Too bad we weren't staying on the next day!

We went to Eddys restaurant for dinner. This was well recommended and we did enjoy our meal...





We also saw some rather large yachts in the marina.......




and we were surrounded by others....not quite so large ....




We had a long day ahead.... a 7 to 8 hour trip to St Kitts. Alarmingly once we left the Gustavia harbor we didn't see any other boats all day! No others were taking the same route!



There was a 'swell' around Nevis so we were going instead to the marina in Basseterre in  St Kitts.
Excitement en route was when we caught a fish! and I learned the many uses of the blue bucket!


Unfortunately it was a barracuda, which can't be eaten as they are contaminated by naturally occurring toxins...


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