We arrived in St Bart’s and anchored outside in Gustavia harbour, but were surprised when we went in to clear in to find that no matter where you anchored from shell bay to effectively the Columbier Bay, you were up for harbour charges – effectively about €19 per day – more than we had paid in St Marteen for a week! We had plans so we checked in and paid for 4 days and made our way round to the Yamaha dealer Chez Beranger (chezberanger@wanadoo.fr), introduced ourselves to Marie-Marcelle, with whom we had been dealing with over the past two weeks to secure their last 15HP engine, and made arrangements for the delivery of the outboard in the morning. We did pick up the harbour authority’s magazine that should have given us a clue to the prices – it was a publication that looked at home on any Toorak coffee table.
We then went back to the boat mumbling our discontent and settled in for the night or so we thought. When we got back the wind had shifted and we had swung within a boat length of the bow of a French Boat (huh - got them back!). The owner emerged as I was looking around the anchorage for somewhere else to anchor and suggested politely we were too close so we moved and re-anchored next to the channel marker and hoped like hell we didn’t drag into the channel in the middle of the night.
After a night of numerous anchor watches by captain and crew, we arose anxiously awaiting our new purchase – the new donk. We made our way in slowly and took delivery of the new motor, unpacked it on the dock and reverently lay the new Yamaha 15HP Enduro motor onto Debbie for the slow trip out to the boat. We then spent the day changing the motor, reading the manual (yes Karen now forces me to read all manuals before I can play with my new toys), figuring how to mix 2-stroke oil and getting familiar with the run in instructions. Finally it was ready to go.
Well almost, it had to run on fast idle for ten minutes before we did anything else! So we waited....
And finally it was ready to go ... slowly... for the next fifty minutes we ran it just above start trying to get it up to 50% throttle, but it went so fast that we had trouble getting there. That’s when we wondered how we would get it to full throttle for stage three, we asked our friends Guy and Christine on Princess of Tides and Guy’s recommendation was and I quote “Get Karen a Snoopy the Red Baron leather hat and goggles, sit her in the bow with 6 cases of wine and let it fly!” But I saw only one way – Karen would have to leave the dinghy and Evel Knevel here would have to do the hard work on that himself.
Anyway enough about the engine, what about something for the girls you say. Ok shopping. Our first trip with the new motor was in to do some shopping. If you are reading this Andy, you would have loved it – all the big names in about 100 yards.
And boys, you would have been proud of me – all of those expensive shops and my wife wanted to hit the chandlery and the hardware! How well have I got her trained? In fact, she had to grab me by the arm several times to stop me drooling over the €26,000 watches! We walked along the harbour to the Industrial Zone, found the champagne shop, decided not to buy the Tattinger and then found numerous homeware shops and the hardware, but as it was after 4:00 and this was France most things were shut so we took the scenic route back to the harbour (up over the hill) and had a magnificent view of the bay from the lighthouse.
Next morning we were up and did the historical tour of Gustavia, taking in the museum (not worth it), the old fort (nice view over shell beach), shell beach and a very nice bar there where we stopped for a breather, the churches, the old town hall and basically everything in the brochure and that was before lunch! We stopped at Le Select for a cool drink before Karen decided it was shopping time again. You guessed it, back to the chandlery, hardware and home shops where we bought new coasters and a beach umbrella and anything else we could think of – it was after all over a week since we had left St Martin.
We paid another day to anchor in the crowded harbour and then, after watching the Maltese Falcon unfurl her sails and sail off into the sunset, we took off north to Columbier to relax (and not spend anything) for a week.
We had planned to do a couple of jobs like install the new inverter, while we were up here, but we read the park guidelines and found we could not work on the boat. This did not however stop us from employing some of the locals to clean the bottom of the boat – and they worked for food alone!
Columbier is a beautiful bay at the north end of St Barts and a popular overnight stop between St Martin and Antigua, but we got hold of a buoy there and stayed a week. We walked up to the hills surrounding the bay and did a bit of exploring.
We did however get stopped by the gate with “Beware of Dogs” sign before we got to the old Rockefeller house
I also amazed Karen with my culinary skills making fresh roti for dinner!
As our week of swimming snorkelling, reading (I polished off 5 novels in a week) and relaxing came to an end, it was time to put Debbie’s new donk to the test – dinghying down to Gustavia to check out. Fortunately I, for some reason, had the foresight to put the boat papers in the waterproof bag, for when we turned through the dinghy channel we saw that this was probably going to be a rough trip. It only took twenty minutes, but we were both wetter than if we had swum to town! The donk went superbly, still yet to get it to full throttle but it was an exhilarating ride none the less!
We did the last chandlery run (in case we had missed anything) bought some fresh food and it is on to St Eustatius tomorrow!
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Boofa
DATE: 5/29/2011 11:06:04 PM
Congrats on the new Yamaha Matt. I know you've had HP envy for quite a while.
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Janette Boluch
DATE: 5/30/2011 12:11:53 AM
As usual a great blog Matt. Wish I was there. JB
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Mum
DATE: 5/30/2011 10:13:32 AM
Loved these pictures Matt. Looks a beautiful part of the world.
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