Our route from St. Croix to St. Martin took us back through the BVIs to Virgin Gorda, where we would make a crossing that started before the sun came up. After carefully navigating through the outer reef , we were able to motor sail towards Anguilla where we planned to rest for the night. Happily, our charts were accurate, and we never kissed any rocks or coral that morning. That is always a good start to any day on the water. Traveling in the dark is not our favorite thing to do, but it is nice to have the sunrise guide our way.
We were in a bit of a hurry to get this crossing behind us, because as usual, we were keeping a close eye on forecasts, and things were trying to get spicy. Multiple times a day, we were reviewing the weather to our east via multiple apps to have a good idea of what might be trying to form. The first real weather threat for us on this journey was from a storm system named Bret. The tricky thing about these storms is that their projected path and intensity seems to change almost hourly. Bret was obviously going to cross the Lesser Antilles, and very likely to be a full hurricane when it did, but the expected location and strength was changing with each forecast update.
Since our very safe and very slow boat cannot outrun anything, we thought it would be in our best interest to find a safe place to essentially hide until the threat of Bret had safely passed by. Thus far, St. Martin was not in any of the forecasts, and we couldn’t think of a better place to be.
We secured a berth at Marina Ft. Louis, which was within walking distance of some of the best restaurants and boulangeries we’ve ever known. The Marina was fairly empty, so it was pretty peaceful. Almost all of the charter boats were already on their way to Grenada for the storm season.
One morning, we hiked up to the old fort and were treated to an awesome view of our boat, the whole Marina, the mooring field, and even a rainbow on the horizon. It hardly seemed real.
There is a small yacht club at the marina that serves delicious Italian food. I ordered a focaccia pizza type appetizer without cheese, and the chef came out to make sure he read my order accurately, and then offered multiple options to make the dish good enough for him to want to serve it to me. In the end, he decided adding roasted tomatoes and garlic was an acceptable option. Between my teeny-tiny French skills and his limited English, I was impressed we did so well designing my meal.
The only downside to this location was the fuel dock wasn’t operational yet, but we located some options on islands in our path, so we weren’t really worried. We have two 50 gallon fuel tanks on board, so we were pretty sure we had enough to get us all the way to our final destination of Grenada, but we liked to top off tanks whenever we could to be safe.
Now then, when I say the baked goods were a work of art, I am not exaggerating. Everything was almost too pretty to eat, though we were able to power through each tasty bite. There are no pictures that could possibly do these breakfast treats any justice whatsoever.
One of the more eye opening and quite frankly disturbing things we learned while shopping in a lovely grocery store is that while the French islands have a nice variety of high quality foods, we had difficulty finding any US food brands. This is because mist are not legal to sell as ‘food’ in many parts of the world. Too many preservatives and other miscellaneous additives. The local versions of our favorite treats had significantly fewer ingredients, but were usually much tastier, too.
We spent a few days walking around the French side of the island, taking in the beautiful architecture, old doors, and enjoying delicious local treats. Then we rented a car for the day to check out the Dutch side of the island. We had visited that side years ago, and were eager to see how it may have changed over the years. Of course we had to go to Maho Beach at the end of the airport’s runway, and watch tourists get blown away by all the planes taking off. It was great to see Sunset Bar and Grill not only still standing, but it seemed to have expanded since we were last there.
We were relieved that Bret stayed far to our south, eventually crossing over St. Vincent and the Grenadines. We hoped the storm didn’t cause much damage. Once we verified that there were no new storm systems brewing to our east, we found a forecast that looked good for our route, and prepared to make another departure before the sun was up. This time, we were looking at a 13+ hours journey to St. Kitts.
Traveling Team Fischer 