In the morning, we took a saunter through Gustavia (the main town in St Barts) and wandered about among the quaint little houses and shops. It was Sunday, and in my experience, France is generally closed on Sundays, so nothing was open except for a few restaurants, but we had a nice walk through town and covered most of the roads in Gustavia. Afterwords, we returned to the boat and made cheese fondue, dipping veggies and bread in the cockpit while some people snorkled and swam about the cove. We had a long lazy afternoon relaxing and enjoying the view. Later that night, I decided to go swimming and dove off the boat. Several others decided to join me. Then as we were bobbing in the water we decided to swim to shore. The water was perfect, warm enough to be welcoming in the dark, and the swim to shore was sheer pleasure. There was a lovely breeze blowing and the best part was that the wind was not even chilly. Out of the water or in, it continued to be a perfect temperature. We sat on shore in the dark with occasional mottled moonlight filtering down, building a sandcastle which slowly evolved into a sculpture made of breasts, in honor of Demeter, the many breasted one, with all shapes and sizes duly represented. It seemed to fit with the rather primal nature of the evening. We sat talking for a long time at the water's edge letting the wavelets lap at our legs. At one point I went running down the beach, following the perfect white sand to its eventual end among the jagged black rocks. The wind ran with me, dancing over all of my skin as I streamed down the shore like a spirit. When I returned to our end of the beach I heard voices in the water and swam out to meet several more of our people, including Sam. They joined us in our night time revelries and worship of mother nature and her wind spirits. There were many clouds in the sky and the moon only occasionally peeked out around their frayed edges, so the night was very dark and we were moving through the night mostly by feel. Most of us had at some point in this adventure lost track of whatever suits we may have been wearing all the better to experience the wildness of the wind and water on our skin and we were each on our own personal meanderings about the beach occasionally crossing paths, but when the new group came we formed a little posse of exploration. We had seen a staircase leading from the beach straight up into the woods. We were a tango line trailing up the steps in the blackness, barefoot into the unknown, each one with a hand touching some part of the person ahead for reference, for comfort. The stairs twisted back and forth up the slope with heavy vegetation hanging overhead hemming us in. Eventually the stairs ended and we were on a dirt path through more vegetation with nothing but faith leading our feet forward into darkness. We were creeping naked through the bowels of the earth like a many-feelered creature, touching, tasting, grokking the unfamiliar night around us. Moving forward unprotected and unafraid, goaded by the mischievous wind. Much giggling and stumbling surrounded us like a cloud of sound we could not see. Eventually our way was barred by a blackness which we were not prepared to penetrate. Not barefoot and vulnerable as we were. Besides, we were pretty sure we were on our way up to someones private mansion anyway.... We took our expedition back to the beach and had a last swim before returning to the boat, and hot chocolate in warm bellies, and an overall feeling of grand satisfaction with the world. Perhaps it was the Bailey's and Frangelica, but I'm partial to believing it was the wind. Afterward, I lay on the deck wrapped in a blanket enjoying the vastness and clarity of the heavens. The Southern Cross was in the sky now and was visiting me daily along with the ever present Orion and Big Dipper. The stars in this black void of a cove stretched out unhindered forever, undimmed by lights of humankind, and the wind played across them like a harp in my mind plucking points of light and weaving them into a web of patterns like a road map to my soul. At that moment, it was hard to imagine anything better than this.
We sailed to St Kitts as a hopscotch point but didn't spend any time there and early the next morning we were on our way to Saba - the island that is five miles across and 3000 feet high. This island is crazily inaccessible. As we sailed along the southwestern part of this nearly round land form, we passed endless cliffs and forbidding precipices with little towns perched at the top, a thousand feet up, looking like at any moment they might slide off into oblivion. We finally saw a strange little house set in the wall of a cliff several hundred feet up and what looked to be a staircase made of stone twining its way up from a tiny beach, just big enough for a dinghy to land on. This is called "the Ladder" and was the original landing point for the island. In the old days this was the only way to get onto the island and everything that was shipped there had to be beached by dinghy then carried by hand up those 400 stairs to the edge of the main town on the island, called simply, "the bottom". It was a little Dutch village nestled in the craggy jagged "lower" peaks and behind it rising above, Mt Scenery stretched to its lofty heights at 3084 feet. The houses were all little rectangular villas with symmetrical
shapes and little shuttered windows. It was a very quaint little town and we explored it amidst sudden downpours and heat showers of sun dripping down on us like butter. At one point we came around a corner and confronted a high wall of greenery thrusting up into the sky and the clouds moved across the threshold of that horizon so fast it felt like the land was moving through the sky like a ship in an ocean of clouds. We all stopped in awe and some of us reached out to grab on to something as a wave of vertigo swept through us.
The climb back down was through jungle and along steep precipices with the stairway wandering down elegantly and offering incredible views of the boats moored below. By the time we reached the bottom all our legs felt like jello. Landing the dinghy on the beach had been quite an experience but trying to launch it again was surely an adventure. With seven people in the dinghy pushing out through the crashing breakers and trying not to get pushed back on the rocks that surrounded us on all sides except for the tiny spot where we had landed... We all got a bit wet, but at least we didn't lose anyone. To celebrate our survival I cooked a huge pot of Mexican style deliciousness made of ground beef, sauteed onions, black beans, corn and a variety of spices which we piled into homemade tortillas. If you were reading back in St Vincent you might remember this meal which I learned to make from Deb. It was a huge success and though my tortillas weren't quite as good as Deb's I was quite proud of my first attempt. I used a roll of saran wrap as my rolling pin and it worked quite well. Later we made a red velvet cake and spent the evening watching movies and jumping into the ocean in between rain showers. It was a rocky rolly night in a place that had little protection from wind and swell. Nowadays people come to Saba by plane, so noted by the many t-shirts we saw proclaiming "I survived Saba's airstrip" - supposedly like landing on an aircraft carrier - one of the shortest runways in the world. Even now, there are few routes to enter Saba that are accessible by boat. It's like an autonomous castle country that cannot be breached by invaders and its moat is the Caribbean Sea itself. Sam and I dropped the mooring at 6am while the guests still slept. The first few hours of our crossing back to St Martin were sloppy and confused with ten foot seas and Zenaida surfing those giant waves like a champion. It was strenuous work keeping any kind of course through that mess but it was mad fun and an amazing ride.
Back in Simpson Bay, we made it through the bridge on the Dutch side and anchored in the lagoon. Later on, we dinghied across to France to have a lovely dinner in Marigot. Fresh mussels, lobster, tilapia, prawns, beef carpaccio, lamb cutlets. It was a culinary delight. It's one of the best things about St Martin - to be anchored on the Dutch side visiting bars and shops in the Netherlands Antilles and then taking a short dinghy ride across the lagoon to have a gourmet meal in France. No customs, no hassle, no ID, no shoes.... The lagoon is a wonderfully protected anchorage being completely enclosed and accessible only by two small drawbridges, one on the French side and one on the Dutch side. The only problem with the lagoon is that no one can swim there because it is a cesspool of waste. There are thousands of boats anchored inside and there is no facility for the removal of waste so it is all dumped right there. We cannot go swimming off the boat here and we joke about it being typhoid water and if anyone fell in we imagine them dissolving before they reached the shore - but not to diverge from the discussion of fine dining.... As we ate we were entertained by a man who traversed the harbor where all the restaurants overlooked the bay. He would pause in front of each and offer a performance. He climbed over all kinds of furniture while walking around on his hands, including going from a handstand on the ground to a handstand on top of a bar stool by climbing up using only his hands. Then he did all of this again while balancing the bar stool on his head. The bar stool was resting on his forehead on one of its feet. His final feat was to have one of the touts from the restaurant stand with his arms in a circle before him, making a rudimentary hoop about the level of his chest. The young man took a running start and dove through the hoop without ever touching the man and then
tucked into a roll as he hit the ground and came up on his feet perfectly poised. He was quite an impressive one man show.The group spent the next few days lying on the beach, lazing in the hammock, and wandering the market in Marigot as they prepared for their flight home. Despite some rounds of seasickness and not the most perfect sailing conditions for non sailors, everyone had a really excellent time. Having seven people living on the boat for a week was quite an adventure in space management, but a fun time was had by all.
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