Now we had heard a lot about them – the British Virgins, but we had never met them. They are supposed to be beautiful full of nice little cosy places to hide away... but you will never be alone, there is always someone coming along to snuggle up to these beautiful British Virgins, and from what we have been told – it is mainly charterers with all the known dangers associated with them – poor anchoring, aggressive mooring ...

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Well we finally made it to Sint Maarten after a fantastic overnight sail from Guadeloupe where we spent New Year. The wind was on the beam for the whole way and shifted with us as we turned around the top of Nevis. If not for the fluky winds (it varied from 4 knots to 30 knots over the night) and the bumpy seas as we left Deshaies it would have been a perfect sail!<< MORE >>

That’s right, we have only had half a holiday season in an English speaking country since we left home, (Year 1 – Baiona – Spain/ Cascais - Portugal, Year 2 – Canary Islands – Spain, Year 3 – Puerto Rico, Year 4 – Dominica (English with a twist) / Guadaloupe, Year 5 – French West Indies), but everyone still enjoys it much the same way with fireworks on New Year’s Eve and lots of partying. << MORE >>

It has been awhile since I have written, as (the) one avid reader pointed out to Karen in his Christmas email, but you must understand that it has been hurricane season in the Caribbean and that means just one thing – lots of parties with friends we may have only seen once or twice over the past twelve months. But I am probably jumping ahead of myself, there were a lot of miles covered between Guadaloupe and here so I will give a quick rundown on our trip before explaining Grenada in Hurricane season.<< MORE >>

Previously Matt & Karen’s Soggy Adventure... (bugger it read them yourself). So we checked in at Le Pelican and everything in Deshaies was as we remembered it (except Harold no longer was delivering bread, which is why we came back – fresh baguettes and croissants in the morning without leaving the boat – how civilised!) Anyway, there was not much we needed to see since we had been here before, so it was a relax station, with a dive thrown in.<< MORE >>

In our task of ticking off as many islands in the eastern Caribbean before we head a little west later in the year, we motored our way south to St Kitts and Nevis in a manner that is not honing our sailing skills at all. Kitt’s is only about 22 miles or 3 ½ hours from Statia, but when you arrive at the marina and walk through the Cruise Ship terminal to customs and immigration, you could be light years away from the tranquillity and simplicity of Statia.<< MORE >>

Our plan all along was to make it north to Barbuda, across to St Martin, West to the Virgin islands and then back down through Saba, St Eustatius, St Kitts and Nevis and then back to Guadaloupe for our trip south – well that was one of the plans anyway when we decided not to go north this year. And we pretty much did it, with the exception of Anguilla and the Vis so we were pretty pleased with ourselves when we arrived in Statia. According to Doyle there may or may not be mooring buoys when we arrived and after tooling around the anchorage we decided to go with the option of No buoys as they all looked light weight and private so we dropped the pick in nice clean sand just off the old wharf ruins. The anchorage was picturesque with the fort and village decorating the cliffs above Low Town.<< MORE >>

We finally escaped the clutches of St Marteen / St Martin and dragged the anchor up after 9 weeks anchored in Simpson Bay (yes we are a bit unusual in that we never went in through the bridge to the lagoon with the big boat, but enjoyed the bay and suffered the roll and the fees) and headed east to St Barts. We were on a mission... All the brands are in St Barts, Hermes, Cartier, Ralph Laurent, Yamaha etc etc. Yes you heard right Yamaha. We had ordered a new 15 HP outboard to replace Debbie’s 6HP Suzuki donk that has started to seize up in places you would not expect.<< MORE >>

During our one week stay in St Martin (which lasted 8 – the subject of another blog) we heard a lot of people talk about Saba and the alternatives for getting there. Very few people take their boats due to the unprotected nature of the harbour and the deep water. Saba has remedied part of this by putting deep water moorings down, but there ain’t alot they can do about the roll. The other option is to take a fast ferry across from St Martin on a day trip for about US$122 including taxes, lunch and a tour. After much deliberating about the cost and the fact that the ferry is known as the vomit comet, we decided that this was what we would do. << MORE >>

After much nail biting and “discussions” on which parts of Barbuda I was allowed to take Where II (Coco Point in, Spanish Point is out, Low Bay is questionable or so the missus thinks) we were ready to head north to Barbuda. We spent several hours pouring over the charts and Doyle’s guide chartlets to define a safe (read very safe) course to Barbuda. This was not easy as no two charts agreed, however we had been told that Doyle’s charts were pretty much as good as they got. WE were concerned that they did not show a large submerged rock close to where we wanted to anchor in Coco Point that was on our Navionics electronic charts, but as they say, your eyes are the best navigational tool so we set sail with a little bit of trepidation (Of course I try and hide mine so Karen doesn’t realise that I don’t really know what we are getting ourselves in for, but what the heck – you only live once and we have survived the rocks once before in our rock solid cat!)<< MORE >>