Rade de Gustavia, Saint Barthélémy

We were up at 5am this morning, before daylight, hard to imagine that only a year ago I was up at this time most mornings for work. We had breakfast and dropped the mooring just as it came light, leaving Jolly Harbour at 5.45am. Today we will pass to the north of several smaller islands which we plan to visit on our return journey south for the hurricane season – Nevis, St. Kitts, Statia and Saba.

It was a pleasant beam reach to St. Barts although we had 70 miles to do before nightfall so we needed to press on, the wind was with us though a beam reach all the way, compromised only by the need to balance boat speed with fishing speed! However, we were rewarded with 2 barracuda (released) and the biggest tuna caught so far, additionally we had another tantalising encounter with a marlin. I was resting my eyes for just a moment on the cockpit seat after our early start when Kevin work me to say there was a marlin just behind the boat and when I looked up I saw a dorsal fin in the water just behind the boat (about 20ft back). This is apparently classic hunting behaviour as the decide which fish / lure to attack one of the reels started screaming but only briefly and when Kevin pull in the line the leader (line leading to the lure) was ragged but the bait untouched.


Our biggest tuna yet!

The last hour or two getting to St. Barts were quite anxious as we were keen to arrive before dark, however luck was with us as a big squall descended obscuring the view of the entire island when we were about 7 miles away and provided 20 knots winds to boost our arrive. We dropped anchor at 5.45 into the only spot we could find, as it was very very busy for the annual St. Barts Bucket race when all of the classic / superyachts get together for three races over the weekend. It was like superyacht soup, not only with super sailing yachts there for the race but also super motor yachts there for the party and lots of normal yachts there to watch.

Kevin got straight to processing the tuna in the approaching dark whilst I tidied up and we had a lovely meal of (very) fresh tuna fillets and potato wedges before getting an early night after a long day. However, sleep was to prove elusive as by 11pm we were up again with the anchor dragging, the first time ever since we bought this one, but you tell from the growling sound of chain on rock that the holding was not good. We then had the unenviable task of reanchoring in the dark on a crowded anchorage. Luckily we did manage to find some sand on this occasion and it dug home, though some of the chain was still grating and sleep was rather intermittent.