Overnight to St. Barth's

Posted by Liz

Hope that Spring feels like it's coming around the bend for you - but for us, the notion of spring means that our journey is starting to come to an end.... boo-hoo in a big way!

We're currently in St. Barth's, where we honeymooned 10 years ago (!). We did a 12 hour sail, which meant six hours of night sailing (we left at Midnight) - from Antigua, where I had did my first night watch, alone! I've been on watch through the night previously when I sailed from Bermuda to Boston back in 2003, but this time, I was on my own. I was a bit nervous, mostly about ship traffic - but there were only four boats - one big cruise ship, a couple of sailboats and a fishing boat. Ed thought that was a lot of traffic, but it seemed OK to me - he said sometimes they can go for days without seeing a boat, but this is a busy route.

As it turns out, I had nothing to be nervous about. It was very light wind from behind us, so we motored the whole way and I didn't have sail changes or tweaking to contend with. Also, I could read the ships lights (red light on port/left, green light on starboard/right and white running lights or stern lights) and could see them on our radar screen at the helm, so I was able to detect which direction they were moving and how far away they were from us. If it would appear that there would be a close call, I would have had to radio them on Channel 16 of the VHF radio and let them know of our position and make sure we had a plan on how to pass each other. We actually did this procedure with the big cruise ship, which was pretty interesting.

It was pretty exhilarating, actually, because the moon was just about full and lit the way for us - so it wasn't so inky black out (although the beauty of that would be the star-gazing and shooting stars!). It was very energizing, and even Chippy was totally psyched and energized - - he has never been "allowed" to stay out all night and play, so this was a new adventure for him and he was like a little kid - so excited that he couldn't sleep - and the poor thing was just such a tired lump after hours of being awake, that reluctantly he fell asleep in our arms while we were still underway in the late morning hours.

When we got to St. Barth's, we anchored in Gustavia harbor, thinking that we'd spend some time doing a gastronomic tour of the town - fabulous restaurants - however, it was SO lumpy and bouncy because of the wind and the big sea swells coming in. Very uncomfortable - you almost felt sea sick while at anchor!

Also, with the US dollar being what it is compared to the Euro, St. Barth's is more expensive than ever. One night, we went out to a casual place called Le Bistro, on the harbor, and had salads, pizza and iced teas - - $100 US. Yikes - that certainly doesn't fit into our sailor's budget!