Thursday, February 03, 2011
Although the immigration official had told us she’d be in the office at 07:30 it wasn’t until about 08:15 that she showed up and since we’d already cleared out she just took another copy of our papers and whacked an exit stamp into my passport (remember the librarian’s stamp in one of the Indiana Jones movies?) and we were out within minutes. Getting Arita‘s kedge anchor up was easy but I had to don my snorkeling gear in order to help Rob get my second anchor up, it had dug itself very deeply into the sand and was very difficult to dislodge. Nonetheless we got it out and it is just before 9am right now and we are ready to depart. Our plan was to sail straight through to Basseterre or perhaps Île des Saintes with an alternate of Deshais, but we discussed another option this morning to sail to Nevis (a short and easy sail) then get up in the wee morning hours and sail from Nevis to the Île des Saintes, breaking a 24-hour trip into two segments of 31NM and 92NM. We might change plans while underway. We did change plans, the seas were significant and the winds higher than predicted, so it was decided to head into White House bay on St. Kitts and ride out the weather there. The anchorage is very protected and has excellent snorkeling and hopefully I can cadge a ride tomorrow and get a rental car.