Happy Hour in de Carieb

And after 14 hours in the air I landed in Sydney (from Buenos Aires). Qantas was so kind to put me in a 4 star hotel in Sydney (because I missed my connection to Perth) which was a nice upgrade after two months in multi person dorms. It was great to catch up with everyone in Perth, especially with new kid on the block, Wilson Senders, and it was nice to stay in our own house for a while. We had a few classic Friday night after work drinking sessions and everyone was kind enough to invite a lonely backpacker over for dinner which kept the home cooking to a, very pleasant, bare minimum. After four weeks of catching up, drinks and even 2.5 weeks of work (to improve the cash flow) the final was a farewell concert of the Stray Cats in Fremantle. We were with seven (ex) colleagues and wives (and about 2500 other rockabilly’s) and saw a fantastic concert of the Stray Cats, who were still rocking as ever. A fantastic final to some good times in good ol’ Perth and I think at least Erik was glad to see me leave after 4 strenuous Friday night sessions starting to take their toll.

On to the Carieb to catch up with the Nunki crew. With a ridiculous, but cheap, itinerary via Tokyo, Chicago and New York, Fem and I were finally reunited again after nearly three months of separate travels. It was of course great to see Femke again and after two days on the island of Antigua we joined Karel en Truus on the Nunki. They were all very happy to having successfully completed the Atlantic crossing, especially because it had been quite a rough trip (this was in the weeks thereafter confirmed by many other sailors who were complaining about the unusual rough conditions this year; one Dutch navy guy who did the passage on a 80m fregat – the Nunki is 14.5 m - complained that he’d never had it this rough, it had been his third trip!). We stayed in Antigua a couple days more trying to squeeze in as many happy hours as we could, we celebrated Truus’ birthday, eating some delicious local lobsters and after a week or so it was time to explore some other islands in the Carieb.

First stop: Montserrat, the island famous for it’s active volcano. In 1995 the complete population of the island had to be evacuated and today only 1/3 of the island is habitable, the former capital is buried in a thick layer of ash and a no go zone. It’s a macabre sight, part of the island is tropical and lush, the other part is like a moon landscape, buried under a grey layer of ash. After some goat water (local dish) and a few Carieb’s (local beer) we moved on to Nevis. The islands are so close to each other that it generally only takes about 4 - 6 hours to sail from one to the other and thus island hopping is done quite conveniently. After two days on Nevis (Karaoke, Sight Seeing etc) we move on to St Kitts (similar program) and then we set sail to Holland, St Eustatius. At one time Eustatius was the busiest port in the world (about 300 years ago), now it’s a very quiet island with barely 5000 inhabitants. It was very disappointing to see that they did not sell kroketten (best Dutch snack, in fact best snack full stop) on the island, but it was a beautiful island with very friendly residents. After Eustatius we moved on to the next piece of overseas Holland, Saba. Saba is probably the most beautiful island we’ve seen in the Carieb. Saba (1800 inhabitants) is one huge rock, sticking 880 metres out of the ocean. If you approach Saba you would not have a clue were to go on land on this steep rock but they luckily managed to cut out a harbour in the fifties (before that you had to take a steep ladder, cut out in the rocks, to reach the villages). We tour the island, there is only one road so we see everything we can from the road and the next day we walk to the crater to reach the Netherlands’ highest point; Mt Scenery at 887m. But still no kroketten, so we move on to St Maarten, the biggest Dutch leeward island. And yes, while we are doing a kind of pubcrawl, we stumble upon some Dutchies in one of the yacht clubs, happily chewing away some kroketten. They refer us to the next door Dutch snackbar which we happily frequent a couple of times. We are at St Maarten to pick up Femke’s brother, Lars, who is joining the Nunki for about 3 weeks.

We sail to St Barth where we are welcomed by a ray of some kind and a turtle. St Barth is the island for the rich and famous and although we don’t meet any movie stars, a big night out in town confirms clubbing here is indeed for the rich. From St Barth we move on to Anguilla, one of the flatter islands. Nearby are lots of reefs and little islands, my favourite one being one with 4 palm trees and a pub, nothing more, nothing less. From Anguilla we sailed to the British Virgin Islands (BVI). This was a somewhat longer trip of 90 miles so we sailed over night but the Nunki was going so quick that we had to slow her down as much as we could as to not to arrive in the dark. The BVI’s are many a sailors dream and there are so many islands that you sometimes have the feeling you’re sailing on enclosed waters, i.e like sailing on a large lake. In the BVI we did more snorkelling, saw more tropical fish, coral and turtles and did a hike along the bouldery coast of Virgin Gorda. And then we were suddenly six weeks further down the track and it was time to wrap up our travels trough the Carieb and with that came an end to Femke’s 3.5 month stint on the Nunki. It was a fantastic time on the Nunki and a rather unique trip visiting all these beautiful small islands. We thank Karel en Truus for having us onboard during this wonderful trip (great to have parents – in law – cruising the Carieb while you’re on a world trip yourself) and wish them all the best with their future travels through the Carieb and later perhaps further. For us it was on to Holland, including Lars, and after one night in San Juan (Puerto Rico) visiting some salsa bands we separately made our way to Holland. One more month of freewheeling and then it’s back to work…….