Nevis Nice

After leaving Statia we headed to St.Kitts and Nevis. We had originally planned to anchor at St.Kitts to check it out even though the anchorage is reportedly quite rolly. We dropped the anchor in Basse-Terre and the rolling began! It was like being on a roller coaster. We were so hungry we decided to make lunch and keep moving. As I was heating the frying pan for a pancake lunch I hear James call "ok we gotta move now, can you come up?". I run up the steps and we were dragging our anchor and moving through the harbour. There was a submerged pilling marked with a slightly less submerged floating bottle of bleach so we had reduced our scope on our anchor chain so we didn't swing and hit the piling - I guess we didn't have enough scope out even for a quick lunch! We kept moving and ended up in Nevis.

We decided to take a mooring ball at the famous Pinney's Beach since they actually charge you more to anchor anywhere in Nevis than to take a mooring ball. The next day we went to clear customs which in classic Caribbean style is drawn out and involves visiting many people and going to many different offices! Behind door number 1 is the Customs Official who clears in the boat then sends you to door number 2. Door 2 is Immigration who clears James and I into the country then sends us back to door 1 to shows Customs we've cleared in. Then we get send to door number 3 which is the Port Authority. This is where we get presented with our different options for anchoring, moorings and fees involved. After we pay our fees and get a receipt we go back to door number 1 to show we've paid then all the clearance forms are released to us. By this time we were ready for lunch and luckily right next door is a small cafe serving up some delicious Caribbean fare! I had acke and saltfish with coconut dumplings and ground provisions, and James had jerk chicken with all the traditional sides! It was while we were sitting there sipping our beers that my brother texts me with the exciting news that he's engaged!!  I was always remember "Blessings Cafe" as the place I found out my brother and his girlfriend Linzey are engaged!!! Congratulations guys!

The slogan for Nevis is "Nevis Nice" and man is that accurate. This is hands down the friendliest little place we've been! EVERYONE speaks to you and offers directions, advice or just conversation - it's absolutely lovely. I don't know what is in their water but people are just smiling and happy and friendly.

One of the things we did was visit the hot spring. Maybe the world's hottest spring. It was so hot that we felt cold when we got out and it was about 40 degrees celsius outside. We had wanted to do a hike up a volcano while we were there but for the life of us we could not find the trail head. We had read that you can access the trail through one of the golf courses. We saw a lot of monkey's but not a single trail. NO one on the island seemed to know where it was and after hours of "ummm yeah I think you go left" or "uhhhhh just keep going straight" we gave up.

Vervet Monkeys 

The weather was good the next day so we set out for Montserrat. We had just cleared the mainland of Nevis and I heard this flapping noise. I stuck my head out of the enclosure and realized I could see right through our mainsail.

Sail repair 

So we dropped the main and turned around and headed back to Nevis! Thankfully it wasn't a rip - the stitching on our ancient old sail had come undone so we were able to hand sew it back together.  The weather was good so the next day we were Montserrat bound!

Giant caterpillar