Round-up of a beautiful Caribbean season…
Time is flying by and we have spent five awesome months in the Caribbean islands, the second half mostly between St. Martin, BVI and USVI.
This was Moonwave’s first season in the Leeward Islands and she probably enjoyed it as much as her crew and guests on board.
Nice steady winds, sunshine and warm and clear water, at least most of the time. And lots of rainbows – haven’t found the pot of gold at the end yet…
We will always remember one amazing sail in February from Sint Maarten to Tortola. We hoisted the big yellow spinnaker in Marigot Bay, SXM and jibed twice upon arrival at the western end of Tortola to catch a mooring bouye in Soper’s Hole – in the middle there were couple of hours of beautiful sailing with the big kite up. Upon arrival in the BVI we met some friends who were joking that we take the “yellow” Q flag serious as ours was 300 sq.m big. (Note: upon arrival in a foreign country we have to fly the Q flag to show that we had not cleared customs & immigration yet. Once the paper works are taken care off, the curtesy flag can be flown.)
Once we went to Trellis Bay, we stayed there for a couple of days and didn’t consider that Full moon was coming up – amazing how many boats shows for this occasion, there are a lot of mooring buoys in this “little” bay”, as full moon approches a lot of boats “pair” up for the mooring buoys, two boats at one mooring ball, and in case you want to leave early the next morning, it’s almost impossible to find a way out of the mooring field… luckily it was calm weather.
The passages from the BVI to St. Martin are not always that much fun. It’s not as fast as the downwind sail and not as comfortable neither – it can take more than twenty tacks to get there. But it is always worth getting to St. Martin. The island, half French, half Dutch, has a lot to offer and is great for supplies, provisioning & awsome French bakeries. The island has a good supply of ship chandler its and other shops and it’s normally also quiet good to get some work done. It’s also easy to reach St. Martin with international flights from Europe and US.
This year we didn’t participate at the St. Martin Heineken Regatta, but went to see the other gunboats participating. Looked like a lot of fun and we are looking forward to participating in the future.
We also had great guests/friends on board this winter and we will mostly remember the 2015/16 winter season due to them.
Here some more “animal encounters” of the Caribbeans: in the BVI it’s normal to have a chicken sleeping under your table when having dinner. Please meet Lila the “lovely” goat from the service station in St. Martin, FWI.
