Monday 7 January, St.Kitts: Quiet day onboard doing a bit of admin, instead of hiking.
Today we celebrate one year since we started the Atlantic crossing and commenced our sailing adventure eastwards from Europe. And in celebration, we were planning to hike the Mt.Liamiuga volcano. Last evening we got our backpacks ready, sacrificial clothes dug out (we know from previous similar experiences we should wear our worst shorts and shirts) and early alarm was set.
But weather changed our plan this morning, as we wake up to heavy rain and black storm clouds over the volcano. Even so, we wait for a couple of hours to see if it clears… it didn’t. Really no point in hiking up into rain clouds and seeing nothing, not to mention the possibility of getting lost in the mist.
So at 10am we reluctantly return the hire car. We’ve had three lovely days driving around and seeing most of the highlights, so no need to extend for today, especially with such weather. The return is as relaxed as the pick-up: “just leave it in the parking lot with the keys inside, we’ll come get it sometime today.”
The rest of the morning is spent with calls and emails to St.Maarten, Reckmann and Selden, all related to our vang issue. Glen is concerned that yet again we will arrive for it to be fixed and have to wait on parts. It’s Monday, holidays are over, so time to push some people. Sure enough FGK Rigging in St. Maarten have not yet ordered the parts and Reckmann Germany is not responding. Apparently this week is stock count week so no interaction with customers. And this after a company shut down for Christmas for 2 weeks! Sometimes you got to wonder how European companies survive – such customer service wouldn’t survive in USA.
After lots of hours of such inquiries, Glen goes for a cool off. He snorkels to some nearby rocks where we’ve seen lots of people being dropped by tripper boats. And there he finds a wreck…or what was left of it. Looks like it was an old freighter smashed on the rocks – probably 30-50 years ago. Surprisingly the bronze propeller is still there along with lots of colorful coral and fish.
When he gets back and in the shower he decides to give the aft bathroom a thorough cleaning. It’s time to rid the shower of lime scale from all the recent land-lubber water we’ve been using ever since Annapolis. From now on it will stay spotless with our own made water that has zero calcium or impurities in it.
As we sit for lunch, we hear a helicopter coming, and it lands on a very smart looking super-yacht which is anchored few hundreds meters behind us. Bringing the new set of guests probably, or the owner, who knows. It’s a first for us to see a helicopter on a super-yacht actually being used. We were beginning to think the ones we saw were just polystyrene mockups – just to show off!
Then, later on a very fancy launch boat passes us, going to Salt Plage. It looks rather intriguing, something like a Star Treck ship and screaming “look at me, how cool am I?”
It only has a glimpse at Salt Plage, and then it takes off back to the same mother-ship the helicopter landed on. We didn’t have a chance to take a good picture of it.
And later on, just as we are admiring a wonderful sunset, we watch how a huge crane is lifting the launch onto its bow deck. And it must be a huge crane, because this launch boat was only slightly smaller than Cloudy Bay! And the bow deck must be 50ft above the water. Quite a ship, quite a toy. Or a toy full of toys.
The rest of the evening we spend carrying on with our admin tasks, and at the end of it we are content, feeling like we are on top of things again.
Towards the night the wind starts dropping, and when we go to bed there is not a breath of wind. Very weird. And we wake up few times thinking we heard the chain rubbing against rocks. But when we go out in the cockpit, we are in the same position. Maybe Glen was dreaming after seeing the wreck on the rocks!