May 22, 2010 - Gustavia, St. Barts

I've probably had more exercise in the past two days than I do most weeks. One of our guests, Kate, is competing in a workout competition at her office. She explained the rules to me, oh, at least twice, but the gist of it is that she has to exercise at least five days a week to stay in the running. So, we've all been hiking and swimming and doing water aerobics to make her daily quota. I tried to convince her to substitute scrubbing the bottom of the boat (a great workout for the lungs and legs) for the swimming and polishing stainless or waxing the hull (these are mostly upper body workouts) for the water aerobics, but for some reason couldn't sell it. I clearly need to work on my powers of persuasion.

Here is the next installment of Deb's guest blog entries [with a few additions by me in brackets]:

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We woke up in beautiful Anse de Colombier and, after a quick breakfast, Sten dropped off us on the beach so we could hike around the corner of the island to Anse de Flamandes. It was a 30 minute walk and the beach at Anse de Flamandes did not disappoint. We walked to the far end of the bay on the road through town and then walked back along the immaculate white sand beach. Danika and I went for a quick swim before heading back to Columbier and Kate continued to stroll along the beach.

Once we got back to Columbier, Sten brought the dingy to shore to grab our clothes/shoes and we all swam back to Mata'irea. After our morning filled with activity, we took the boat to a [bouncy] anchorage outside of Gustavia and then took the dingy to Shell Beach (Anse de Grand Galet). We had a wonderful lunch at Do Brazil, which came with the added bonus of free lounge chairs (with umbrellas for much needed shade) for a post-lunch nap on the beach. Danika and Kate again took immigration duties while Sten and I relaxed for a couple of hours on Shell Beach.

When Danika and Kate came back from immigration, we got good news that we had secured a mooring in [the well-protected] Gustavia Harbor for the evening. So, we shuffled back to Mata'irea to (a) get ready for dinner and (b) move Mata'irea into the calmer waters of the harbor.

[Having never previously moored Mata'irea both bow and stern, Sten and Danika sussed out the situation and came up with a game plan. I joined Danika in the dinghy to rig the lines on the mooring balls while Kate stayed on board Mata'irea with Sten. As Sten drove Mata'irea into the harbor and past the stern mooring I threw the sternline up to Kate, who was standing on the back deck ready to cleat it off. Then Danika and I zipped up to the bow mooring and prepared to throw the lines to Sten and Kate, who were ready to cleat them off. The bowline ended up twisted and being way longer than necessary, so after dropping me off on the swim platform, Danika took a shorter, sturdier line from Sten to redo the bowline. The whole operation was a little tense and salty (so much for those pre-dinner showers) but very successful. We popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate.]

Once secured in the harbor, we quickly had a visitor (Trond), who was on the sailboat next to us in the harbor. Trond has been in St Barts for a while and has a myriad of problems on his boat, including problems with his generator, alternator and engine. To take his mind off his troubles, we invited him for an evening in town with us. (Generous as that may sound, we did not invite him aboard to share in our champagne.) We looked at several menus, but I was swayed by the gazpacho and we settled in for an evening at Le Strand. It was a delicious gourmet meal, complete with truffles, foie gras, tuna tartare and plenty of beef. We finished with a few desserts to share and headed back to Mata'irea for a gentle night's rest.

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