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| Anse de Colombier. |
Well, here we are…. It’s taken us
two years to eventually find ourselves anchored off a lovely beach, swinging on
a mooring ball enjoying the beautiful clear waters with wonderful sea life
around us. (I started writing this blog entry while we were in St Barths, in
Colombier – I am finishing this off in Falmouth Harbour in Antigua, now that we
know we can use our Starlink)
However, before I get carried
away… lets go back a few days when we were still in St Martin.
We eventually moved from Simpson
Bay Lagoon out into Marigot Bay where we could start making water and go for
swims off the boat. (FYI – Simpson Bay Lagoon is the largest inland lagoon in
the whole of the Caribbean). Mel was shocked by the state of Passages’ hull, rudder,
and prop with all the barnacles. After just 3 weeks, there was some serious
growth, enough to slow the prop down. Since Mel has been given the ‘all clear’
with his leg, he has been taking every opportunity to spend time in the water.
While we were anchored in Marigot Bay, we were lucky enough to see two HUGE motorboats. One, we
were familiar with as we saw Bravo Eugenie in Lake Worth, Florida back in June 2023. It is such a beautiful boat as it seems to twinkle and sparkle at night.
Passages:
No 10: Lake Worth, Stuart, and Fort Pierce.
Another boat we saw is owned by
an extremely wealth person who has dealings with Google’s Meta sphere. Of
course, we could see all the details of the boat on our AIS and on Marine
Traffic.
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| Croissant Royal |
Back to reality……. Mel and I visited one of our favourite places in Marigot, Le Croissant Royal, where Mel enjoyed their coffee and of course the buttery croissants.
On Wednesday, 29 January, we eventually checked out of St Martin and decided to sail north to Grand
Case. In our previous time in St Martin, we hired a car and drove to Grand Case, but this time we sailed to the bay. It is well known for all the elite and fine dining French restaurants and is often referred to as the ‘gastronomic capital of the Caribbean.’ We went ashore for dinner but knew we did not have the leisure of time on our hands to enjoy any of the fine dining restaurants, so enjoyed the wonderful and tasty authentic Caribbean Street food outlets. These outlets are known as’ lo – los’ (Locally owned, locally operated)
Early Thursday morning, 30
January we set sail to St Barths. We had to tack several times to reach the
opening between St Martin and Ile Tintamarre. Ile Tintamarre is a protected
nature reserve island surrounded with white beaches and snorkelling spots and a
popular spot for tourists and locals of St Martin.
Once we had sailed passed Ile
Tintamarre, we made a beeline for St Barths, to Anse de Colombier, to be
precise. The capital of St Barts or St. Barth’s – all short for St Barthelemy
is Gustavia. It is an extremely busy and full harbour. Plus, in St Barths you
pay for everything, nothing is for free, even anchoring, which we have noticed
is becoming the usual trend in the Caribbean. Gone are the days when you can
anchor off one of the islands and enjoying the surroundings. Oh well!
In St Barths, anchoring off Anse
de Colombier was 10 EU a day whereas off Gustavia it was 40 EU a day and it was
crowded. In Colombier, there were mooring balls on the north and south sides of
the bay. We moved three times in the space of two days when we realised that
the north side was far better than the south side. On Thursday afternoon when
we arrived, we saw that there were only a few mooring balls quite far out on
the south side, so we grabbed one. However, that night, the fetch from the
shore made us rock and roll most of the night, so on Friday morning we decided
to move closer inshore where some spots had become available. Well, that night
was slightly worse as the wind in the southern alcove of the bay, swirled
around making us, swirl in circles with the mooring ball hitting against the
side of the boat. We were becoming quite exhausted from the lack of sleep, so
when we saw that the boats on the north side seemed to stay in the wind AND a
mooring ball became available, we headed across to the north side of the bay
and spent the next two nights enjoying our time in Anse de Colombier with many
turtles frolicking around us. We spent
part of Saturday snorkelling around the boat and as mentioned at the start of
this entry, we now felt as if we were back cruising and enjoying our time on
Passages.
Going back to Friday, we took the long dinghy ride into Gustavia to check in and enjoy the place. Despite feeling tired, it felt so good to be walking. We checked in first, then walked up to the famous lighthouse of Gustavia, where we could watch the small planes landing at the airport. It looks as if the planes are going to crash into the mountainside but of course they do not. We walked to Shell beach, which is, as its name suggests, full of shells. We also walked to both Forts – Fort Carl and then to the main fort, Fort Oscar, which unfortunately we could not go into as it is the main Police Headquarters. Pity as it had lovely views of the whole bay. It is a beautiful, clean town with many expensive and exclusive shops. Even the coffees were a lot more expensive than at our wonderful Le Croissant Royal in Marigot Bay. There are flowers and lush trees, everywhere, plus there is a sense of
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| Shell Beach |
order that we did not see in St Martin. The traffic actually flows here.
Here is a publication we receive monthly – it
is called the Caribbean Compass, and it had an informative account on St Barths,
this past month – Enjoy!
St.
Barths: A Fantastic Destination for Sailing Cruisers - Caribbean Compass
On Sunday, we walked along one of
the nature trails into Flamand’s, which is on the east side of the island and
where a number of secluded houses for the rich are located. The walk was along
the coastline, and it was quite beautiful. We saw goats, cheeky tortoises who
were not afraid to approach humans, obviously begging for food, iguana,
cockerels, hens, and their chicks.
We noticed in the weather
forecast that there were going to be high winds in the area later in the new
week (Monday 3 February) and that Monday evening/Tuesday morning looked the
best possible time to sail to Antigua. We knew it would take us up to 18 hours
to get there.
We left Anse de Colombier
mid-morning Monday and anchored in Gustavia, where Mel then went to check us
out of lovely, clean, up market, beautiful Gustavia and we took the anchor up
and set sail for Antigua at 2.00pm.
Well, as seems to be the norm,
the weather was quite a bit different to what we had seen on Predictwind
earlier that Monday morning. There is a saying in sailing communities – “Boats manage
the weather; it’s the people on board who don’t” – That is so true for me. Thankfully,
Mel is so relaxed and capable. I managed to do a few watches, but Mel did the
lions share.
We were hoping to go to Freemans
Bay/English Harbour but that did not materialise – more in our next blog post.
So here we are in Falmouth Harbour once again, 11 years between our stays.
Until next time when I write more
about our time in Antigua and where to next, keep well, travel safe.
Best wishes always.
Mel and Caryn
