Karl & Kara Go Sailing

  Thursday 12 th May, White House Bay, St. Kitts. We've suddenly gotten to the pointy end of the season and with flights booked out of Curaçao in late June we've picked up the pace a bit with our travelling and hence I've fallen completely behind with the blog. Boom, boom, boom we're hitting every island in full on fast tourist mode. Dominica – bam! Guadeloupe – bam! Montserrat – bam! Nevis – bam! Kitts – about to be bam! Next stop Statia – bam! So I'll just try to organise the blog as best as possible and not let it get too confused. So we're in St. Kitts & Nevis (nee-viss). Two former British colonies that banded together in the 80s to become an independent federation. “Is this your first time in The Federation?” the immigration officer asked me as we checked in making me feel like I was in Star Wars. We spent a couple of delightful days in Nevis and just this morning had a short sail up to Kitts. We've anchored in a spot with nothing going on othe...

  Saturday 7 th May, Little Bay, Montserrat. Montserrat ('S'rat to the locals), The Emerald Isle, has some Irish connections going way back that I'm still trying to fully get my head around. It seems a lot of the early indentured workers and planters were Irish so people have surnames like Boyle and Skerrit and there's a Carr's Bay and a Kinsale and a Potato Hill. And they celebrate St. Patrick's Day – but it's a bit complicated. It's still a British Overseas Territory, like St. Helena with whom they have a bit of a sibling rivalry going when it comes to funding. The crest of Montserrat - some Irish influence evident. Montserrat is also capable of serving up a grand soft Irish day of rain, drizzle, mist and fog. Anyway, we had the most fabulous sail up here from Deshaies in Guadeloupe. The Gods were really having a good day – sunny, blue skies with little fluffy white clouds, a calm sea, a steady breeze coming from the perfect direction and a route th...

  We had another lovely sail up from Dominica to Guadeloupe – a fast close haul across the channel and then a very picturesque potter through the islands of Les Saintes to our anchorage at Terre de Haut. Les Saintes are a group of tiny little islands between Dominica and Guadeloupe that belong to Guadeloupe (and hence are part of France). They were hotly contested back in the day because of their strategic importance – the French in Guadeloupe and the English in Dominica could both use the islands to ensure a safe entry to their respective islands. Because the English and French owned every second island up the chain no channel between islands was safe but if you managed to nab Les Saintes you would then control a safe channel. Anyway, back in 1782 the naval Battle of the Saintes was a major victory for the English and the start of their domination of the seas. Now Terre de Haut is an adorable little island with a cute little village and some lovely restaurants for lingering over l...

  Roseau, Dominica. We had a wild ride up across the channel between Martinique and Dominica (dom-in- eek -a). A little bit of help from the current saw us flying along at 7 knots in fairly big seas and we even overtook another boat! That never happens. When we arrived in the capital Roseau ( rose -oh) we contacted our agent (the use of which was mandatory and expensive, causing us some irritation) to find out what we needed to do next to check in. We had already had to send him all our documentation, vaccination certs etc. etc. etc.. He cheerfully replied that he'd already checked us in and we were free to explore ashore and pick up the paperwork from his office whenever suited. Well that's a good start. Apart from being the quietest, least chaotic, most chilled and probably cutest capital we've seen, the most striking thing about Roseau was the ongoing scars left by hurricane Maria in 2017. This cat 5 hurricane (with maximum sustained winds of 280km/h) hit poor Dominica...