AN EXTRAORDINARY DAY
- Paul Weston
- Mar 25
- 4 min read
It was early morning* in the Anse Colombier, on the north coast of the small island of St Barthelemy, and Kadash, AKA Kim, our 40’ sailboat was about to depart for the island of Nevis, about 60 miles south, the next step in our island hopping voyage south and east from the British Virgin Islands towards Grenada.
We’ve been cruising on and off for about eight years, at first on Mitch, our 31’ motorboat, and more recently aboard Kim. The boat is our home, and it stays the same, but on some days everything else changes. This is a good thing, usually – we do not go cruising in search of an uneventful existence – but sometimes the day’s experiences are so varied and vivid, they almost amount to sensory overload. This was to be such a day.
The Anse Colombier has superbly clear water, and the sight of a turtle surfacing near the boat made Sally think that an early morning snorkel would be in order, so we took the dinghy to the foot of the nearby cliffs. Snorkelling event complete, we dropped the mooring (anchoring is strongly discouraged to protect the seagrass) and headed towards the island’s main port, Gustavia, so that we could clear customs.
St Barthes - so much like an upmarket part of Mediterranean France that sometimes it is difficult to remember that you are in the Caribbean - is a superyacht capital. Gustavia is not very far from Anse Colombier, but the three mile trip involved threading our way between these anchored monsters. Some of them were already familiar to us, including Burrasca and Asahi, Peroni Navi built sailing yachts whose owners sensibly, in my opinion, decided to go for the ketch rig option.
Gustavia’s roadstead is choppy from the wakes of passing boats, and crowded, with superyachts jostling for space offshore, and large numbers of smaller cruising yachts, some of them looking very rundown, packed into the shallower areas near the land. We eventually found a place to anchor, and went ashore in the dinghy, the sea choppy from the wakes of passing boats.
The sense of separation from the rest of the Caribbean is heightened in Gustavia, especially on the day we visited, just before the Bucket regatta for large sailing yachts was about to start. The quay was packed with sailing superyachts moored stern to, and the town’s narrow streets thronged with their crews and passengers. Clearance at the harbourmasters office was quick and efficient, and we bought bread and filled up our water containers before returning to Kim, wasting no time in weighing the anchor and heading out to sea.
There was almost no wind, and we motored along at five knots, passing the superyachts that had gone out to practice for the racing, including the J-Class Velsheda, built in 1933. One by one the yachts gave it up, and motored back to Gustavia. We were alone.
As Kim slid along at five knots over the intensely blue, almost unrippled sea, the panorama of the islands gradually changed. St Martin and St Barthelemy shrank astern, the outline of St Kitts grew ahead, while on the starboard beam, the cloud topped Saba and St Eustatius slid past, looking every inch the volcanoes they once were. The outline of Nevis separated itself from St Kitts, we ate our pre-prepared sandwiches, and everything was going very smoothly until I realised that the fuel gauge, which was registering full, could not possibly be right! I hastily rewired the gauge, which appeared to indicate that the tank was only ¼ full.
Calculations were hurriedly made – we knew Kim does about 10 mpg, and a look at the chart showed how far we had motored since refuelling. The result was that I thought we easily had enough fuel to get to Nevis, but as fuel is not available there, it would be better to stop at St Kitts, and refuel in the morning at Port Zante marina in Basseterre. Our original destination, Pinney’s Beach in Nevis, is easy to approach at night, but Basseterre is not quite so simple as there is limited room between the shore and the cruise ship jetties.
The moon was rising as we rounded the north west extremity of St Kitts and made our way south along the coast, watching out as best we could for the numerous fishing buoys, which sometimes appear in surprisingly deep water. As is often the case, it was quite difficult to reconcile what we could see on the chartplotter with what we were seeing from the cockpit, especially as the lights of Basseterre were hidden behind a headland. As we drew close, however, Basseterre came into sight, and we turned towards the shore. Luckily we had stayed at the marina there, so had some idea of the terrain. Basseterre is a significant cruise ship destination, and has two large jetties to accommodate them. The ships generally arrive in the early morning, and we wanted to anchor in a place which was sufficiently clear of the jetties, and far enough from the land.
Keeping a good lookout, and monitoring chartplotter, radar and echo sounder, we identified the jetties, and crept in towards the land. Our first attempt at anchoring seemed to be rather too close to the jetty, so we weighed the anchor and moved closer to the shore and dropped it again. That seemed better, close to the shore, but well out of the way of even the most carelessly handled cruise ship. Content, we stopped the engine and went below.
*13th March 2025
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