Nevis is Nice

After a week or so hanging around St. Kitts we “braved the ocean” again for the quick and painless 7 mile passage over to Nevis. The anchorage there has a reputation for sometimes being a bit rolly (this time of year many/most anchorages in the Caribbean are prone to swells), so we had our fingers crossed as we picked up a mooring just north of Charlestown, the capital.
Backing up just a bit, the folks at the Customs office in St. Kitts told us we were okay to head to Nevis, and would need to check in there. But when we arrived at the Customs office in Nevis, the officer said we “weren’t in the system,” and told us we incorrectly had the originals of our clearance documents (the St. Kitts Immigration officer had given them to us, and said they were ours, even though Emmy questioned her about them), and then he looked at us stone faced and uttered the unhappy comment, “That’s a problem.”

Luckily, making puppy eyes and asking for his help seemed to do the trick, and he put us in the computer. Yay! Based on the weather forecasts I’d been listening to we wanted to leave Nevis for Montserrat in a few days on Saturday, and another Customs officer said he’d be there Saturday morning to clear us out (more to follow on this topic). We walked around Charlestown (birthplace of Alexander Hamilton) a little, picked up some local bread, tania, white yams, bananas, edeh and tomatoes from the little open market stalls and headed back to the boat.

The next day, we heard a knocking on the hull, which turned out to be Richard, from the boat moored next to us. He and Shelly had wintered in Venezuela, and were easing their way up the Caribbean, on their way to Florida, and invited us over for drinks that evening. We poked around town some more, and decided to rent a car the following day to see the rest of the island.

That evening on Richard and Shelly’s boat (Preferred Stock) they filled us in on the current situation in Venezuela. The cost of living is very low, and cruisers have for quite awhile enjoyed staying there during hurricane season, but crime is spiraling out of control under the Chavez government, and he’s building and arming his own private army. There have been many robberies and some attacks on cruisers there, and many folks are pulling out. Venezuela wasn’t on our list of places to visit to stat with, but now it’s on the “Avoid like the plague” list!

When I went to the rental car office the next day I ran into another group of sailors (from “Brass Tacks“) who were doing the same thing, and they asked if we’d be interested in having dinner at “Miss June’s” that evening. They said Miss June has an old home on the north end of the island and cooks dinner for parties of six or more, and they were only three - I said I’d ask our group and track them down later.

Our group of four packed into a little Toyota and headed off, stopping first to pay a quick visit to the local manager of the company I used to work for, just to say hi and pick up any local information that might help us have fun and stay out of trouble! The biggest news item she shared was that Hurricane Omar had heavily damaged much of the Four Seasons resort on the island, and the insurers were in some kind of squabble over paying the claim, so the resort will stay mostly closed this year, causing a lot of negative economic impact on the island.

Next we visited a privately owned botanical garden on an old estate. Being a green thumb/plant enthusiast, Emmy was in heaven, as there were gazillions of tropical flower varieties, orchids, bromeliads and fruit trees! Unbelievable water features. On our way over the hill we stopped briefly at the house where Admiral Horatio Nelson lived and married. We wound our way around the coast on newly paved roads, through little villages, with breathtaking views of the Atlantic. Nevis is fairly mountainous (dormant volcano), with the high mountains usually draped in clouds, and is a lush and green island.

We walked around another restored plantation house, visited Nesbit Plantation the home of the former Francis “Fanny” Nesbit who married Admiral Nelson. Heading back to Charlestown we stopped at a little house where a lady was making red clay pottery. She told us where she went to dig the clay, and showed us how she fires the pieces the old-fashioned way without the benefit of a kiln. Eventually we came across “Miss June’s,” and stopped to see if the folks I had met had made dinner reservations. When a fellow answered our knocking on the door, Emmy turned to me and said, I went to school with his brother s on St. Croix!”

It turned out that Miss June’s sons (Mestier‘s) had lived with their father and gone to school on St. Croix, and we had a nice chat with her, but they weren’t geared up for cooking, so dinner was off. We headed back to Charlestown and piled into the dinghy to head home for the night. We stopped off at “Brass Tacks” to make sure they knew Miss June’s was a no go, and they invited us aboard for drinks (hmmm…is there a pattern developing here?). They’re from New Hampshire, and are down for the winter, having left their boat in Antigua for the summer. From Nevis they’re heading back to Antigua for a few days and then turning south, so we may see them again.

We puttered around a couple more days waiting for the weather over the ocean to moderate a little, for our next hop to Montserrat. Nevis was the site of the marriage of Lord Admiral Nelson of British Naval fame (Trafalgar) to local resident Fanny Nesbitt, and there’s a little museum with Nelson memorabilia here. Charlestown is a small, but bustling little town, which is quite picturesque with lots of old cut volcanic stone buildings.

Weather forecasts held true, so Saturday morning I dinghied in to Customs at 8 AM…but nobody was there? A fellow said he though the Customs officer would be there around 8:30, so I went back to the boat and got things on Avalon ready to go, and returned to Customs at 9. The office was still dark, so I wrote a note to Customs requesting them to clear us outbound for Montserrat…if we didn’t get started soon we might not make Montserrat by dark, and I’ve never been to the current anchorage there…I knew nobody would be manning the Customs office on Sunday, and the weather was forecast to deteriorate again on Monday, sort of forcing our hand.

Back to the boat, raised the sails, we’re on our way again! Goodbye Nevis, we had a great visit!