Monday 31 December, St. Kitts: New Year’s Eve at Salt Plage, Christophe Harbour.
We plan for a chill-out day for the last day of 2018 … to make up for the last 364 days 🙂 And for the morning we manage to stick to the plan, with a slow start, mostly texting family and friends and not rushing to leave the boat till nearly mid-day. It’s a beautiful day today, much more blue sky than usual and less humidity. Lovely.
When we venture ashore, we have a short walk to the nearby Christophe Marina, which is a recent development catering to super yachts. It is very nicely done, with a beautiful small garden, a few shops and a cafe. Looks like a little oasis in the middle of these parse looking hills that surround it. And we joke about the fact that they probably had to import the palm trees too, together with all the construction materials.
But they have a lot more to do. Only a fraction of the overall development plan is completed. We wonder if it will succeed or join the many other developments in the Caribbean that either become uneconomic or end up mismanaged and fall into dilapidation.
After we have a stroll through their grounds (and fail to obtain the internet password from the marina office) we settle for a coffee in the shade of the coffee shop, watching the world go by. Not much going by though. There are very few people visiting the place.
Even so, we do have an interesting encounter with a lady who skippers, single handed, a charter Beneteau 47.
Previously she used to work on Skip Novak’s high latitude sailing yacht down in the Antarctic. As crew, she has crossed the Atlantic but not the usual way – she went from UK to Maine via Greenland! This is her first season of sailing in warm climate. Quite a dramatic change I would say, and definitely for the better! And now that she is here with these lovely warm sailing conditions she says “what on earth was I thinking before?!”
We then meet an American couple who recently moved to St. Kitts and have a pleasant chat to them too. They work in the university here. Apparently it’s a very good veterinary school, with lots of students from the USA.
Mid-afternoon we return to Cloudy Bay for a bit of admin on our laptops. Yesterday Glen contacted the rigging company in St. Maarten to order a service kit for the vang and we are pleasantly surprised to receive a quick and professional reply from them. And yes, the vang leaked again after we did the hydraulic oil change, so that didn’t solve the problem 🙁
And the thru-hull fitting which we ordered months ago to Budget Marina in Antigua finally arrived there, a week too late. And when we inquired on the possibility of having it shipped to their shop in St. Maarten, they quoted the shipment three times the cost of the fitting. So we’ll pass that and buy the fitting elsewhere.
After a sunset drone flight in wonderful evening light, we smarten ourselves up and head ashore to the Salt Plage bar with our New Year’s Eve tickets in hand. At US$40 each we hope it’s going to be a good night!
We arrive at 8pm and it’s still quiet, hopefully it’s just because we are a bit early. No queue at the welcome stand so we get some very nice glow in the dark tattoos. An hour later a band starts and they are brilliant, with 2 very good singers, and we instantly get into the party mood. Around the bar everyone is friendly and chatty and it helps being with Buddy whom everyone seems to know.
By 10pm the place starts to fill up but the music gradually starts to shift to local music, and by the time the band stops at 11pm and the classic Caribbean DJ comes on, it’s full on “local” shouting noise (music?). People are still dancing but not with the same passion that we saw in Abracadabra in Antigua, where it was really good club music.
As midnight approaches the party is full on and we await the countdown …. but it doesn’t happen! The DJ is so into himself that he either forgets to say/do anything for midnight or he doesn’t realize the significance of the evening! So the only mark of midnight is people attempting to make a noise with mini trumpets that don’t actually make a sound no matter how hard you blow into them, or the fireworks we can see along the shore. At 12:05, we do have fireworks at our venue and while they are not Sydney Harbour Bridge, they are not too bad. Oh … and included in our ticket was a champagne toast at midnight. Well, no sign of that! So Buddy disappears to find the manager and soon returns with not one but two bottles of champagne! So we do a toast, even if a little late.
By 1am the crowd is diminishing and we say our goodbyes and take to the dinghy. All in all a good evening. Certainly better than we would have found on Montserrat or maybe even Antigua.
And then to our first drama of 2019. Just 2 hours into the new year we hear a muffled thud on our bow. We rush out to find a motor boat alongside us! By the time Glen throws some shorts on (inside-out I might add!) they have drifted away from us. With our new powerful spotlight we see that it’s a water taxi full of party goers (or rather, party leavers). Glen screams at then to come back with language anyone would understand.
But they ignore him and motor away …. and proceed to drive right over Buddy’s mooring line! So there they are stuck between the mooring buoy and Buddy’s yacht bow, with our spotlight pointing on them. Even more stupidly they gun the engines which simply pulls very hard on the yacht and both boats surge forward.
Then it’s Buddy’s turn to come on deck and start screaming at them. They gun the engine again in an attempt to get away but this time the water taxi starboard side rams Buddy’s bow anchor to the sound of breaking glass and screams of fright from the drunken cargo inside. Again it’s repeated and again more sound of broken glass! Eventually Buddy “persuades” them to tilt their engines which allows them to get over the mooring pennant. By pure luck, the propellers did not cut the pennant. The taxi then continues to drift off down wind, apparently not knowing what to do next. Glen jumps in the dinghy (luckily he had not drunk too much), checks Buddy is OK then roars off towards the taxi. While cursing the taxi driver and his assistant, who are clearly very drunk, he also gets the boat and water taxi company names. Then off it disappears into the dark in the direction of Nevis with no navigation lights on!
Back at Cloudy Bay we inspect our bow and luckily can’t see any damage. They must have just glanced of our rubbing strip. We will take a closer look in the morning.
This incident was all the more annoying because we had left the cockpit light on all evening to make sure we were clearly visible to tenders and taxis coming and going from the party. But once back on board, having been the last dinghy to leave the dock, we had turned off the cockpit light. We were still legally lit with our anchor light on the mast head, but at water level I guess Cloudy didn’t show up to their drunken eyes.
So first drama of the year, and we haven’t even been to bed yet!
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