Tuesday 22 January, St. Barth day 2: Visit Gustavia town.
Quite a rolly night in the outer Gustavia harbour. As we have breakfast we take in our new surroundings. We are very intrigued just how many yachts we can count with either no mast, broken mast or mast lying on the deck. There must be 10-15 at least. Just why are there so many here in this particular anchorage? Maybe they are boats people have grabbed and rescued from hurricane damage?
We also watch as the planes come into land over us. St.Barts is famous for the required dramatic approach to land on its steeply sloping runway. If they don’t get it right it’s into the sea at the other end! Take a look on YouTube … lots of interesting footage there. They land in a steep dive that takes the plane through a narrow gully with a road transversing it … and they don’t even stop the traffic. We wonder how many vehicles have wheel marks on their roof. The planes cannot be more than 5-10m above the road as they cross it in their dive for the runway. In the sunlight the bay is a beautiful blue, in contrast to the bright red roofs in town. It’s a very picturesque place to be.
We then dinghy ashore for check-in formalities. It’s a free port here, so no customs. We simply check in at the port capitanerie. Like other French islands it’s all very efficiently done on a PC and like Europe we don’t even need to show our passports. We enquire about a mooring in the harbour, but all are taken plus there is a wait list. So we’ll stay on anchor, for free, merci beaucoup! At least we hope it’s for free!
We stroll around the harbour. And it’s true, we could be in a fancy French Riviera port. Lots of glamour shops all pleasantly presented and huge super yachts anchored stern-to the harbour wall. Each of these yachts has 2 anchors out, stretching across to the other side of the harbour at 45deg to each other. The yachts are packed in tightly which means all those anchor chains must be criss-crossed over each other. How on earth do they leave without getting in a tangle? Soon we see the answer. Looks like there is a permanent dive boat in the middle, and if a yacht wants to leave, they dive and sort out any mess before it becomes a problem. Clearly there could be some drama here as a strong cross wind blows down the length of the harbour.
We visit a small supermarket… one of the key highlights of being in a French island! Sure enough, packed with cheeses, and everything wonderfully French. And reasonable prices. We come out with French bread that gets devoured pretty quickly! Then to a patisserie for cafe eclaires. Yummy!
We walk all the way around the town to the far side of the harbour. Away from the glamour shops things start looking ordinary again. And we are surprised at how many properties are still to renovate. There is also a distinct lack of “local” population in the town. White faces only. Quite a contrast from other islands, even Martinique. After organizing a rental car for 2 days we head back to the cool of the boat for an affordable lunch!
It feels very hot today and we hide from the sun indoors. Eager to reconnect to the internet we dig out the passwords collected from the Capitanerie, but unfortunately the network drops every minute. Impossible to stay connected. As usual, it’s a struggle with the internet access in the French islands.
After the heat is gone we venture back ashore, armed with a laptop as we desperately need to do some work on the emails. We head to a telecom shop which we spotted earlier to attempt buying a local sim with data, but it closed already. Bugger, another evening with no internet. We’ll have to come back tomorrow morning.
As a last resource, we take a “seat” next to a plant pot which nicely decorates the pavement in front of the Capitanerie and have a go with the harbour internet right there next to the source. Works pretty good, and we can attend to the urgent jobs.
The town looks very nice in the evening too, and still has the Christmas lights on! Which we have a good giggle about. Not many people out and about, maybe it is still too early. We walk for a short while then head back to the dinghy and on to Cloudy Bay. We’ll leave the night out experience for another day.