April began with the hateful annual event...TAXES. Even in paradise you still have to pay Uncle Sam. We thought we would be getting money back this year only to again be surprise that our tax lady had miss calculated our estimated taxes. So instead of getting money back we had to pay a BUNCH of money. Don't you just hate taxes!
We had our taxes documents sent to St. Kitts so the very first of April we sailed from Guadeloupe back to St. Kitts. It was a beautiful 80-mile downwind sail, first time in six months we have been able to sail down wind! During the sail we passed right by the island of Montserrat. We cruised by Montserrat less than a mile off shore. The devastation from the volcano was amazing to observe. The entire southern end of the island was buried in ash and rock. Their old capital city was so deep in ash that all you could see was the tops of the building roofs. There wasn't a single tree or bush. The entire area was desolate and ash gray in color. The city was completely void of any sign of life. It was quite a sight to see. While we sailed by the volcano continued to spit and spew huge clouds of gray ash and smoke. Mother Nature can be quite unforgiving at times!
We arrived in St. Kitts and collected our "tax" mail from Brenda, the owner of the "Dine and Lime" restaurant. We had meet Brenda our first time through St. Kitts. We spent several wonderful evenings eating at Brenda's and talking the night away with her, catching up on all the local news of St. Kitts. Brenda is a wonderful person. We plan to visit her next year again.
We spent several more days on the southern most tip of St. Kitts in a calm little bay called "White House". We took a couple of long hikes through the dry hills on the southern peninsula. While hiking we saw several green verdant monkeys and for the first time saw a wild pink flamingo feeding in the salt ponds! The beaches along the peninsula are completely deserted and we enjoyed exploring them. The beaches on the Caribbean side of the peninsula were calm with lapping waves. We then crossed over to the Atlantic side and enjoy watching the pounding surf.
Then we headed back to Nevis. Our first stop on Nevis was Sunshine's Bar. Collis, our favorite bartender, remember us and we spent the evening shooting the breeze with him. By the end of the night we had perhaps one too many of Sunshine's famous "KillerBees". We swaggered back to the boat. Several days later we got a chance to do our good deed for the year. We saved a gal from drowning! We helped another couple of cruisers drag this gal aboard our dinghy and back to the beach. She had just been floating away on her back way out where our boats were anchored. She was almost blue because she had been in the water so long. She was also almost completely passed out and just floating with the currents out to sea. She couldn't talk and had no idea where she was or who she was. We took she to shore and after a while she came to enough to tell us she had been at Sunshines. She had been stung by the "KillerBees" too. Luck for her we saw her.
We took a hike on Nevis up near the Golden Rock Plantation to the "water source". It was a lovely hike with some nice views and thick rainforest. We saw several monkeys. Sharon was happy we found some beautiful tropical flowers that had broken off from their plant. Instead of letting them dry up on the ground we took them back to the boat to enjoy them.. While hiking we met a nice couple, Shawn and Sarah from Maine who were vacationing on Nevis. We invited them out to the boat for cocktails and had a wonderful time sharing stories.
The following day we met another really nice couple, Bob and Kristin on Nai'a. They were fellow cruisers. They owned a Swan and were both pilots for United Airlines. The next day we ended up racing or should I say chasing them all the way to Antigua. Even though they beat us by a bunch we got together with them for dinner. At dinner we met friends of theirs from Great Britain, Lord David and Heni. David and Heni are on their boat Galetea. We all had such a good time together we ended up traveling together on and off for the next month.
We had come to Antigua to participate in Antigua's famous sail boat races. Antigua Race Week is the "Grand Prix" of sailboat racing in the Caribbean. Folks from all over the world come to race. The first set of races is called "Antigua Classic". Beautiful old antique wooden boats and tall ships from all over the world come to race and show off. Then the next race is all the modern go fast boats and all the charter boats. It's a week of "party until you drop" activities. We had hoped to get on one of the Classic boats as crew. But after asking around the docks and finding out that most the boat were flying in crew from serious races like the Whitbread and Americans Cup we realized our experience didn't quite stand up to the competition. In hindsight we were actually glad we weren't racing crew. It gave us the freedom to just watch the races and have fun. We took Reality or the dinghy out everyday of the races and watched all the activities. The antique classic boats were absolutely gorgeous to watch. Most of the classics were built back in the 1930's. They had all been maintained or restored to spit shined perfection. The woodwork and brass glistened. The most spectacular were the two "J" boats. They were both originally built in 1934 to compete in the America's Cup. They are 130ft long, sleek and sexy as any boat can possibly be. One of the J-boat named Velsheda it is owned a raced under the British flag. The other J-boat the Endeavour is American. You can bet we were cheering for Endeavour! Endeavour beat the British hands down! Antigua is a British island so we couldn't boast too loud but it sure felt good to have the Americans win!
The races were the most fun to watch from our dinghy. We were able to get right up close to the racing mark and watch and take pictures as the boats rounded the corner. We saw up front and personnel the J-boats rounding the mark side by side. A little boat could not make the turn and stopped right at the marker. Other boats then begin to cluster up as they were trying to round the mark and avoid the little boat right in their way. In all the confusion, the two big W-boats, 70ft long and beautiful hit each other! We could see they were going to hit seconds before it happened. The sound of splintering wood was sickening.
We enjoyed the classic races best. The go fast "Race Week" had hundreds of boats participating. It was a zoo to watch! There were so many boats we had a hard time finding a spot to watch without worrying about being in the way. The best part of watching them race was to see the boats set their spinnakers. The array of colors was wonderful. Probably even as nice as watching the boat race was joining in the nightly cocktail parties. We drank rum and talked to people from all over the world. Great party!!
After all the race week excitement we spent the last few days of April on the quiet eastern side of Antigua. We anchored in a tiny little cove on Green Island in Nonsuch Bay. After the hundreds and hundreds of boat it was nice to have a little cove all to ourselves and to be able to share it with our new friends Lord David and Heni.