Showing posts with label St Kitts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St Kitts. Show all posts

Saturday, March 19, 2011

St. Kitts cruise ship Mecca

We didn't spend enough time in Nevis. It's a shame, but when we tried to get to the most Northerly bay, the wind made it impossible to get there. So we sailed immediately to St. Kitts, across the Narrows.

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The stay in St. Kitts was nice, very relaxing and calm. We stayed a couple of days in Whitehouse Bay, where we met Sam and Alex and got together for a drink and some snacks. We snorkeled the bay to see some old wrecks and saw some old cannons lying on the sea bed right below Victor Too, and a Manta Ray swimming next to one of them.

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In the capital Basseterre we got into the marina for water and fuel and to get six weeks of laundry done. The laundry cost was a bit of a shock and very badly folded on top of that, the price of water was a joke (15 US$) and the fuel never materialized. But apart from that, it was a nice marina and a pleasant town. But it also shows that if you put enough cruise ships in a port, prices become a joke while service not necessarily benefits. We had a similar experience with customs and immigration officers, which we wouldn't rate as high as our sacred guide (Doyle's) does. Perhaps bad luck, but perhaps they just don't need yachts that much anymore with up to 5 cruise ships in port at the same time.

Anyway, the people in town were very friendly and helpful, as everywhere we've been. We didn't go see a lot, being victims of the inflated prices (64 US$ per person for a train ride), but I did two dives at very good sites in excellent visibility.

I prefer smaller islands to bigger ones, but with too many cruise ship passengers in town, sometimes the larger islands with more remote bays provide more alternatives to escape the crowd. So far, we've had plenty of everything not to decide either way. We still have a couple of islands to go, each different. Plenty of opportunities along the way!

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Finding crew is fun

At a party I threw last Saturday, I announced the trip and got a lot of crew in return. I had displayed the trip dates and some graphic representations of the route and invited people to put their names down. I was surprised to get as many interested folk to sail along for a short (1 week) or longer (up to 3 months!) period. Of course, there is still a lot of explaining, checking and organizing to do, but getting this kind of encouragement is fantastic.

For those interested in the exact route, these are the legs:

Ostend to Brittany: July 3rd to 15th 2010
Brittany to Porto: July 18th to August 1st 2010
Porto to Faro: August 15th to 31st 2010
Faro to Madeira: September 1st to 9th 2010
Madeira to Tenerife (Canaries): October 1st to 7th 2010
Tenerife to Boavista (Cape Verde): October 26th to November 1st 2010
Boavista to Grenada: December 5th to 28th 2010 (First crossing)
Then we island-hop along the Caribbean
Martinique: January 15th 2011
Dominica: January 29th 2011
Guadeloupe: February 6th 2011
Antigua: February 19th 2011
St Kitts: March 5th 2011
Anguilla: March 26th 2011
Tortola to Faial: April 21st 2011 (Second crossing)
Visiting Azores: May 8th to May 29th 2011
Faial to Scilly's: May 30th to June 5th 2011
Scilly's to Boulogne: June 24th to 29th 2011
Boulogne to Ostend: June 30th to July second 2011

I feel I've taken enough time to be able to reach every stop along the way and still be able to organize crew for the longer legs. Starting days are generally in a weekend, so relatives and friends joining us along the way, can arrange flights and so on.

I'm not entirely certain if the conditions for the second crossing will turn out to be good enough, but there is some spare time for that trip. I've read several pages of advice, and none are conclusive as to when to start and which route to take. There is the Azores High to contend with, so taking plenty of fuel seems paramount for this leg.

At the moment, I'm very pleased with all the excellent feedback I've gotten.