We thought we would leave the rather crowded harbour here and head north to Colombier bay, one of the jewels of the Caribbean. We decided to leave before breakfast, I went to get the anchor up and it just wasn't coming up, any resistance and it stopped working. It was quite windy and with us swirling all over the place it was difficult to work out what was going on. I had been saying to Rowan for weeks I thought the windlass (the motor that picks the acnhor chain up) was not behaving properly and making a funny noise. We could not get the anchor all the way up, so we put out more chain again and got the bridle ropes tied back on. I made breakfast while Rowan got the enormous Boat Repair Bible out. Finally it proved much easier to phone Tom in England (the guy who helped us when we first got the boat in the Bahamas), and he managed to sort it out with Rowan, the bolt had come loose. Phew what a relief to finally get it up.
We set off for Colombier Bay which is ten minutes away, it is in a marine park and you have to stay on a mooring ball, even though we saw a few boats breaking the rule. Understandably they don't like anchors because it breaks up the sea grass which the turtles feed on. As we had perfected picking up mooring balls in the Tobago Cays we had hoped this would be a breeze. Sadly not - my clever big boat hook got jammed on the enormous thick plastic cover, on the rope hoop of the ball. I finally had to let it go, not too worried as we could swim and get it, at least we were attached on one side. Luckily we have our original boat hook and used that on the other side of the boat but it was so slippery I managed to drop that boat hook in too, but at least we had managed to get tied on. Poor Rowan had to go and dive down for that boat hook which sunk, luckily we are in shallow water. The other boat hook just needed unjamming. After a very fraught time we were finally tied on ,with both our boat hooks safely back on the boat. Never good when you have an audience of boats watching! We needed a rest after all that morning's drama!
Sint Maarten island in the distance.
There were a surprising amount of boats here, almost all French as far as we could see.
After all that we finally sat down and discovered we had no reception, so no comms to finish my blog or contact the kids. There is no road to this bay, the only access is by boat. The only property on the bay is a huge villa built by billionaire Rockefeller in the 1960s, who brought high-end tourism to St Barts. Very dated architecture, but amazing to have the bay all to itself, now it is a marine park, nowhere can be developed and rather special that it has no beach bars or any other buildings.
Rockefeller's house top right corner.
In the afternoon once it had cooled down we took JeldiJeldi to the beach, we climbed to the brow of the little hill and thrilled to get some reception (very sad I know). We had a few things to sort out. We then walked along the very scenic coastal path, to the windward side of the island, to the next beach about a half hour walk along the stoney cliffs. As we got close to the lovely beach of Anse des Flamands we found more and more tortoises. They are obviously being fed, there were bowls out for water but all empty. We gave them water from our bottles and they were straight into it. This is a completely dry island, all water is made by desalination plants. The vegetation looks very dry and savaged by goats that we could hear but not see. Still have not seen a single local!
We finally have signal here.
Walking over to the windward side.
Hat on tightly in the howling wind.
Lots of strange rock shapes out at sea.
Anse des Flamands beach above.
Return to Colombier beach for sunset
A great walk, we had to turn round before we got to the beach as we did not want to do the path in the dark. We had a nice beach walk back at Colombier to below Rockefeller's house. Another great sunset.
We were exhausted and flopped into bed pretty early.
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