Despite the beautiful scenery in Ile Fourchue, we left anchor before noon on February 17th. We set off for Gustavia on the main island of St. Barths, in hopes of a quieter night. The trip was only 5 nautical miles and we got to motor past a lot of amazing super yachts. Once we arrived in the harbor we had a hard time finding enough room to anchor. The water was really deep but the boats were really close together so we couldn’t get enough scope out for the depth without being way too close to another boat. After watching us make several attempts, our friends on Blue Mist hailed us on the radio to let us know that they were pulling anchor in a few minutes and we could take their spot.
The next day, after getting our fill of French patisserie, we decided to head over to Columbier, just a few miles north of Gustavia. The anchorage was beautiful, with good swimming and snorkeling right off the boat, and our friends from Blue MIst and also Sabbatical 2 were there. We did a lot of swimming and relaxing there, and one afternoon we brought supplies from the boats and had a barbeque on the beach.
Lea figured out that we could rent a car and pick it up on the road by walking out about a mile via a really nice hiking trail. The end of the trail by the road had a huge turtle population! We explored the island with the rental and had a great time driving around the sharp curvy roads of St. Barths. At one point as we were near the airport a plane flew so low above the road that it looked like we could reach our hands up and grab it!
MIssing the French patisserie we decided to move back to the crappy anchorage at Gustavia on the 22nd. We found a bit more room this time and felt pretty good about our anchoring, so Douglas, Gab and I headed into town while Lea stayed on the boat to have some quiet time. Later that afternoon the wind switched direction and Lea called Douglas to say that a boat was getting closer to us. I stayed onshore with Ross and Louise since it didn’t sound serious, and we started playing crib. Before long, Douglas called and said, “I need your help to move the boat, please come now!”.
Ross, Louise and I rushed back to the boats to discover that a catamaran was straddling our boat as Lea and Douglas were pushing it off. A different boat was way too close to Blue MIst, so they dropped me off and went to deal with their boat. Douglas explained to me that he had let out scope continuously and the catamaran just kept getting closer, so they might be dragging, and no one was on board. We had to move our boat, but now the catamaran was between us and our anchor. Ross and Louise came back to assist by pushing the other boat out of our way with their dinghy while I motored forward, Douglas took up the anchor and Lea was ready to fend anything off that I came close to hitting. We got out of there and re-anchored without any damage, so all in all it ended well.
We really hated that anchorage and it probably played a role in our decision to continue on our way shortly after the whole catamaran incident. Lea got a flight out of St. Barths on February 24th, and once she was on land that morning we took off for new adventures on St. Kitts.
