Dutch Caribbean (Statia, Sint Maarten, Curaçao)
Thursday 26th May, Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten.
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| Good old Simpson Bay |
We're back in good old Sint Maarten after quite the dash to manage to visit all the islands on the way after our longer than expected stay on Martinique. It's lovely to be back almost exactly a year since we left to head south to Grenada. It's the first time since leaving Carriacou in December that we've come into somewhere familiar instead of a brand new island, brand new country and brand new anchorage. Adventuring is all well and good but there was a lovely pleasure in knowing exactly where we wanted to anchor, exactly where to go to check in, exactly where we could dump our rubbish/buy our fuel/find a good supermarket and exactly where to find the best sunset rum punches. Karl held out a full 24 hours before succumbing to the lure of the Golden Arches for a Big Mac and we held out a couple of hours more before succumbing to the twin dangers of the crew of Christina Too and the Yacht Club rum punches. We quickly found the answer to the question “did we spend too much time in the Yacht Club last year?” when as soon as we walked in one of the waiters yelled across the room at us “Hello, welcome back!” and then asked about how my months in Tassie had been. By the time we left that evening we'd had, among the rum punches, two rounds of shots on the house. Welcome home.
On the way here from Kitts & Nevis we stopped briefly at Statia (a.k.a. Sint Eustatius), which is also a Dutch island. It's a small island with a population of only 3000, a lovely old fort and an impossibly cute little town. The main business is oil. They have a big storage facility at which large tankers can pull in and unload. Then smaller tankers can pull up and buy smaller amounts of oil for more local distribution. I'd never thought of that as a business opportunity before but I suppose it's like any other buy-in-bulk-and-sell-in-small-amounts-at-a-profit business. If you can do it with groceries then why not with oil? There wasn't a lot to do apart from wander around admiring the very (very!) tranquil little town. Karl climbed their volcano one morning (while I was doing the far more important business of my daily Octordle) and was back in time for breakfast. In fact the thing that took up most of our time on the island was trying to track down the only immigration officer so we could check in. By the time our paths crossed it was time to check us out again so I suppose you could think of that as an efficiency.
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| Anchored at Statia. |
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| The prettiest little fort in the Caribbean. |
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| Gráinne in the firing line. |
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| Trying to keep the town a goat free zone. |
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| Karl. Chillin'. |
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| Cutest little town, hard to believe it's real. |
We've been visiting our old haunts here on Sint Maarten including treating Karl to some plane landings and take offs over at Maho beach. We took the Worst Bikes in the World over to the French Side for a lovely long french lunch and made it back in one piece. I swear they're worse than they were last year. Tomorrow we'll be celebrating Karl's birthday with Mary's Boon margaritas for second year in a row.
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| Watching plane landings never gets old. |
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| We did indeed get to Mary's Boon for a birthday drink: a passionfruit rum punch and a margarita. |
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| Having been firm fans of the products of the Pelikaan microbrewery since last year we finally got a chance to pop in for a visit. It's a proper small brewery, two brewers, unpasturised beer (following a brief, catastrophic flirtation with pasturisation), small batch on demand, capping every bottle by hand and a great Irma IPA. |
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| Sláinte. |
Yesterday we went with the crews of Christina Too and Aurora (also partners in crime here last year) on the ferry across to explore the nearby island of Anguilla (ang-willa), a British Overseas Territory. We hired scooters and formed a motorcycle gang. I'm pretty sure we were the main happening on the island that day, we even had our own police escort briefly. The consensus is that Anguilla's a perfectly fine island. It's grand. Some nice beaches. Alright snorkeling. And you can see everything in one day and be content in the knowledge that you never need to go back. In fairness, if you want a beach holiday (just beach, hotel, beach, beach bar, beach, hotel) and have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket this might be just the place you've been looking for.
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| The motorcycle gang takes on Anguilla. |
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| Despite Karl's doom-laden warnings about the dangers of the weight and power of my 125cc bike (my only previous experience being one day on a 50cc) I did survive. |
We'll be aiming to leave Sint Maarten in a few days to get down to Bonaire and Curaçao before hurricane season gets into full swing. And in time to haul and store Gráinne in Curaçao before our flights back to Australia. So at the moment we've had the thrill of collecting all the equipment and general goodies we've had shipped to Sint Maarten and are now trying to fit it all somewhere and get things ship shape before we leave.
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| More parcels than Christmas. Karl's very excited about the new radar and HF radio. |
Saturday 11th June, Spaanse Baai (Spanish Waters), Curaçao.
We made it to Curaçao! And now we're frantically cleaning and packing and sorting and getting ready to haul Gráinne on Monday morning. We decided in the end not to stop at Bonaire due to a combination of lack of available moorings at the moment and a rapidly vanishing amount of time between now and our flights to Australia.
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| The waterfront in the capital Willemstad. |
Our departure from Sint Maarten kept getting postponed and postponed waiting for a decent weather window – the wind decided to completely desert us. So we had ample opportunity to revisit all our old haunts and even managed to get to the cinema to see Top Gun Maverick! Our local supermarket contributed to our preparations by giving us free beer. We were finishing up at the checkout one day and the staff member said “would you like a six pack of beer for free?” (like they try to tempt you at the petrol station check out with the cheap chocolate). Karl and I looked at each other confusedly. Beer for three? Beer for free? Karl had the presence of mind to answer “yes” and we got beer for free. This kept happening every time we went shopping and it took us by surprise every single time.
The sail down here from Sint Maarten was a mixed bag.
Day 1. Not great. We got a few minutes out of the bay when we realised we hadn't changed over the halyard (from port to starboard) when we moved the whisker pole across (it was supporting our flopper-stopper to port while we were at anchor and we moved it over to pole-out the headsail to starboard) so we had to restart the engine, furl the headsail, take the pole in, swap over the halyard, put the pole back out and unfurl the headsail. Sigh. Later in the day (as I was napping, off watch) there was a big bang and we realised the telescoping mechanism in the whisker pole had broken (again!) and in the process had ripped off the shackle connecting the guys (ropes holding the pole in place). So engine on, furl the headsail, figure out how to pull in the pole having lost the guys, fail to find a replacement shackle that would fit, use some Dyneema (fancy schmancy strong modern rope) to reattach the guys, put the pole back out, unfurl the headsail and pray. Then dinner time – no gas. A little detective work found a defective electrical connection in the safety shut off (which, I suppose sensibly, defaults to gas off if the system fails. Doesn't help cook dinner though.). So pasta was off the menu and salad became the chef's suggestion.
Day 2. Much better. First up needed to get the gas fixed. Karl whipped up a nifty little bypass of the safety solenoid and I got my morning coffee! I could have coped without hot food for a few days but night watches without coffee? Might have had to call the coastguard. And a lovely day's sailing. And a hot pasta dinner.
Day 3. Not too bad. A bit of work in the morning to take the pole in because the wind was now nice and strong and reliable. Then just as we were about to reward ourselves with a nice lunch we were hit with a nasty little 35kn squall. Just nasty enough to require a frenzy of reefing, provide a complete soaking and totally spoil the mood.
Day 4/5. Karl gave me the worst handover ever between watches on our last night as we closely approached a headland on Bonaire. “We're going too fast and I can't slow down. We're off course and I can't change direction. Goodnight babe, see you in four hours.”. And he vanished to bed. Team Kara (that's Kara + coffee + music) got things under control, slowed us down, pointed us in the right direction and didn't run aground on the headland. Early on day 5 we arrived at Curaçao and had to negotiate the very long and very narrow channel into Spanish Waters and then try to find somewhere to anchor within one of the pretty full official anchorage areas. Not easy in a sleep-deprived state. Our first attempt found us just outside the anchoring area. Then a catamaran left and we snaffled their spot.
So far Curaçao has been a
delight. We've instantly promoted the locals to the loveliest in the
entire Caribbean. They also have the cutest language – Papiamento.
I could just say that word all day long. Papiamento. It's a creole
influenced by Portuguese and Spanish rather than the
French-influenced creole used in Martinique and Guadeloupe. On our
first day we used an app on my phone to find the bus to town to check
in. It worked. We're not in the Eastern Caribbean now! We found the
Customs building pretty quickly but couldn't find the door (we later
realised that I had been distracted by tall ships and Karl had been
distracted by an ad for McDonald's) so we went on a Google led wild
goose chase across town looking for another Customs office before
returning and marvelling at how obvious the door really was. Then the
customs officer told me we should go to Immigration first. Sigh. He
kindly confirmed the location of Immigration (another hike across
town). Then some chatter in the back office. Then he asked “do you
have a car?”. Nope. More chatter in the back office. “Okay, give
me your papers.” They felt sorry for us traipsing around town and
just waived the usual procedure. See? Loveliest people in the
Caribbean. Then another Google led wild goose chase trying to find
how exactly to get to Immigration. We finally tried getting through
security at the cruise terminal and a delightfully cheery security
guard signed us in and pointed us in the right direction. The
positive of all this aimless wandering was that at the end of the
formalities we found ourselves inside
the security of the port area where the three sail-training ships of
Mexico, Uruguay and Brazil were tied up, flagged up and taking part
in the Velas LatinoAmerica festival. It wasn't open to the public
until later so we had our own private little preview.
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Later in the afternoon we found ourselves having something to eat sitting at tables on a pedestrianised street. How very European. So a lovely spot, Curaçao. To be explored further when we get back from Australia at the end of the year. For now it's all business, business, business.
Bonus videos!
Raising anchor in Spanish Waters bound for Willemstad
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