Sunday 30 December: Change of plan, we go to St.Kitts for New Year.

What a treat to have a full night sleep! And a peaceful one, anchored in the lee of Nevis island. Although the swell gets around here too, it is far from being uncomfortable. Just a gentle rocking.
The wind is still howling though, and we check the weather forecast: it will calm down in the next couple of days, dropping to 10-15kts.
Over breakfast we discuss potential action plans. And since neither of us feels like jumping in the dinghy, rushing for customs then climb the volcano in this cloudy conditions, we agree to leave the exploration of Nevis for when we don’t have a race against time.
The time limiting being New Year’s Eve – we want to be in St. Kitts for that, as it has a lot more to offer as social scene goes.

By 11am we up anchor and depart Nevis, heading the 9 miles across to Basseterre, the main town in St.Kitts.
First we motor passed the Four Seasons Resort next to our anchorage in the lee shore of Nevis. Looks like a nice resort, maybe we attempt to visit it when we return to Nevis.
Soon the sails are out, both main and genoa reefed, and we are fast sailing on a beam reach across The Narrows between Nevis and St. Kitts. The water is flat, the wind 20-25kts and we are charging along at a steady 9.5 kts. So nice to be sailing in flat water again. But even so, spray is covering the decks from the bow wave as the wind whistles through the rigging. What a thrill.

Within just an hour we have already covered the 9miles. Sails are furled and we motor the last bit to the anchorage. Basseterre shoreline is very pretty, with the colorful buildings by the water and the green hills in the background.
There is a massive cruise liner docked up wind of us, but the wind and sea chop is still pretty strong as we anchor. No other yachts here. We guess they anchor, check in then get out of here quickly to a better anchorage. We will do the same. Getting the outboard down and onto the dinghy is pretty tricky in this choppy sea.
But soon we are in Port Zante and clear in with customs fairly easily. Then it’s off to immigration which is in the cruise ship terminal. There we meet a lady from one of the super yachts, Tricia, who gives us all sorts of good information about St. Kitts highlights and a very important tip where to have New Year’s Eve: at Salt Plage by St.Christophe marina in the south of the island.

From immigration we have a quick walk around the town of Basseterre. It’s like most of the other islands capitals. Lots of old buildings and generally quiet except for a thronging area of shops and outlets around the cruise ship terminal, Port Zante.
The town square looks particularly attractive with its clock center-piece in the middle and old beautiful buildings around. But it is totally spoiled by multiple large brightly colored shipping containers that have been converted into fast food stalls and placed all around this otherwise picturesque square. Classic thing you would expect in the Caribbean!

Back at Cloudy Bay, we are rocking like crazy. So before we go crazy, we decide to leave and head for one of the bays we passed on the way here, where many other yachts were moored.
So we start motoring close to shore from Port Zante towards the south of the island. As we pass fairly close behind the stern of the massive cruise liner we suddenly realize it is reversing out of the dock. And in the next second we get a resoundingly loud “horn” from the ship … like: get out the way!! Which we do at full throttle. Oops!

This lee side of the island has low mellow green hills with sparse vegetation and a generally rugged coast. We motor close in, to see what’s what and choose the bays where we could potentially anchor in the coming days.

First we pass Potato Bay, which consists of a cluster of residential compounds sitting on cliff tops.
Then South Frigate Bay is a long strip of gray sand beach, with quite a few colorful beach huts.
South Friars Bay is another gray sand beach, with a modern looking beach club at one end and tatty beach huts at the other end.
Just a couple of hundreds meters along is Ship Wreck Beach Bar siting on a black sand beach. Although it is a basic bar, it seems to be very popular, lots of people are sitting at the bar. It probably has the best location for watching the sunsets.

We then enter the “super yachts area” as we joke about it. It is very sheltered and lots of super yachts are anchored here and playing with their water toys – jet skis, wake-boarding etc. There’s nothing ashore, only rouged coast and same scarce vegetation on the hills. And we find it weird how there are so many of them here, yet hardly any in Antigua where there are so many beautiful bays with white sand beaches to anchor in front of.

And we arrive to our final destination for today, Salt Plage. A small bay, bordered by a rocky shoreline at both ends and a small strip of beach in the middle. The attraction of this bay is the bar, which was recommended to us for nice atmosphere.
As I drop the anchor I look at the venue and can’t stop thinking “really? Is this it?” As it doesn’t look like much. Two small buildings with rusty roofs, and lots of plastic chairs on the deck. Hm, we will soon find out if it lives up to the reputation: less than an hour to sunset! We go ashore as soon as Glen does his usual job checking the anchor, which is nicely buried in the sandy bottom.

The Salt Plage bar is actually themed around an old salt warehouse and it’s been done very well. The clients seem quite up market, some of them came off the super yachts, some expats and some tourists from the nearby resorts. And for once, nice background music is played and we enjoy our evening, declaring it feels like we are on vacation again!

At the bar we meet Buddy from Charleston SC. He has lived here on his yacht (a Catalina 42) for 12 years and extensively cruised the Caribbean islands. So he is a great source of information abut St. Kitts and few other islands where we will go next.
He also confirms that this is the place to be for New Years Eve party tomorrow. So our tickets are bought, at $40 each.
Once the bar has quieted down we head back to Cloudy Bay in the dark and spend the remainder of the evening on … you guessed it, the blog and vlog!