Let’s catch up on things other than traveling between islands…
We finally launched on January 17th. Dave was satisfied with the copper coat work that had been done. (He has since checked the hulls, the day we arrived in Dominica, and said there is no growth on them. Yay!) It also turned out that the hourly rate we were quoted for the work was in ECD (Eastern Caribbean Dollars), so it was only $25 USD/hour and therefore not as expensive a job as we’d thought. We tied up to one of their rickety docks on the 17th and did the bulk of our provisioning that afternoon. We spent the night listening to our lines creak loudly as we tugged bow to stern with the surge.
The next morning we took off for Basseterre. It was nice to be at anchor again, and the anchorage wasn’t even rolly. We spent a couple of nights, completed our provisioning and bought a SIM card with some local data.
We then moved down to Ballast Bay to get away from the city. We mostly did boat stuff for the three days we stayed there, but we did a couple of fun things. We dinghied ashore for a walk and got rained on a little, but it was nice to stretch our legs in the “country.” We met up with a Salty Dawgs couple. We spent a couple of hours together at an art show hosted at Christophe Harbor Marina. It was open to the public, free, and had some mighty fine eats. We all enjoyed ourselves. Just as we were preparing to return to our boats before the sun set, it rained. We, and our clothes, got a free fresh-water rinse.
On the 23rd we moved down to Nevis, since we still had not explored that island. We encountered two catamarans we had met back in Basseterre and had them over for drinks and apps that afternoon. One was heading to St. Croix the following morning and the other to St. Martin the day after that. So we got in a little more cruiser socializing. We spent a total of 6 nights on a mooring ball in the Charlestown anchorage. The mooring was a very good deal at about $30 USD for the 6 nights. They charge that rate for 3-7 nights, so the closer to 7 nights one gets, the better the deal is. 😁
Charlestown is the only substantial town on the island. It is much cleaner than Basseterre, as were all the parts of the island we saw, and the people were friendlier. We visited the Hamilton House Museum, which has a building dedicated to the history of Nevis, and it has the house Alexander Hamilton grew up in until about the age of 12 or so when his family moved to St. Croix. It’s not set up as a house, rather it has a series of old photos plus placards of information about Hamilton’s life and accomplishments. It was worth the visit and the $10 USD each. We took a bus to the botanical garden and back. The gardens were lovely and worth the $17.50 USD each. Besides, it supports their work. The bus driver only charged us $5 USD total to take us to the garden entrance, which was a little more than ½ mile off the bus route. When we were finished at the gardens, we walked the ½ mile+ back to the main road and a covered bus stop and caught a bus back to town. Other than those two adventures, we just had lunch ashore a couple of times (both yummy!) and made too many trips to the Nevis Bakery for pastry (also yummy). We were awaiting a weather window to get to Dominica, or Guadeloupe first. I’ve already posted about our journey from Nevis to Dominca, which ended up being three salty trips with an emergency stop in Montserrat. If you missed those posts and want the details, you can read my posts from February 1st and February 5th.
I’ll stop here for now and fill you in on our six days in Guadeloupe later.
Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
Life on Lady 