St. Kitts – nearly

We had a good sail to St. Kitts with a fast broad reach all the way to the south of Nevis. Approaching Basseterre we heard ‘Torch’ calling the marina with no response and they chose to anchor off. We entered but the only space was to raft alongside a French yacht moored against the quay wall with fenders outside. The response to a request to come alongside was similar to the reaction that I get from dogs who can sense I am not keen on them because it was akin to growling and snarling. They made it quite clear that we were not welcome alongside with the justification that the space was required for the tripper catamarans to turn around which was bollocks! So I missed the opportunity to practice my French and we took off to find an anchorage out of the swell which was coming around the South of the Islands. This involved re-tracing our steps but we found a reasonably quiet anchorage in Salt Pond Bay.

Torch joined us and we caught up over a drink on board as they had also crossed with the ARC+. It being late by the time they left, we found an old tin of frankfurters and a tin of beans and, rather than go ashore, we heated these up with some toast, deciding not to set foot on St. Kitts and push off in the morning and sail through the night on the 140 mile passage to the BVI.