Morning
Our destination is Pinney’s Beach on Nevis today, a short sail from White House Bay. After a late breakfast we started preparing for the sail, but were met with some problems. Sascha weighed anchor, but the boat wouldn’t move. It turned out that we’d fouled our anchor overnight. The winds had turned us around a bit, so I assume that we’d collected the detritus overnight.
After some deliberation we had Sascha get into the dinghy with my Spyderco knife with a partially serrated blade to cut away the taught line connecting our anchor with the bottom. That was a bit of sawing but was successful in the end, severing the line. I’d wanted to keep the lines to save the next boat from the same fate, but it all got pulled back down to the depths of the anchorage.
Sail
The sail from the anchorage to Pinney’s beach was, in my opinion, a “Champagne Sail” with no waves or swell and good wind. I think that Sandra might beg to differ. Regardless, we made it across “the narrows” and to our anchorage in an hour. Right on the outside of the anchorage it looked like a puma at the front of a superyacht and only upon getting closer we saw that it was, indeed, a statue of a dog.
We saw only one open mooring ball, and that was in and of itself rather suspicious. Our first run on the mooring was not successful, as the painter was gone. I had Sascha get in the dinghy to help, but that didn’t work out either. So we ended up anchoring. The boat that came in after us tried the same maneuver and their boat hook remained attached to the mooring as they drifted off. I zipped across to retrieve their hook and together we succeeded in getting them attach to the mooring.
Lunch
Pinney’s beach on Nevis actually means going to Sunshine’s Bar. We went ashore and had an obligatory Killer Bee drink at Sunshine’s and stayed for a late lunch. It was rocking there, as I believe that Sunday is locals day. After our meal we walked around and then opted to return to the dinghy and zip across to the Charlestown public dock. Ashore, we found a Chinese grocery that was still open and resupplied the ship.
Dinner
We went ashore to Sunshine’s for dinner, pulling the dinghy up high above the high-tide waterline. We got a good table but, unfortunately, they were out of ribs so we all ended up getting hamburgers. I tried to order a Carib beer with a lime, but somehow that was too complex for our server and I got a “Radler Carib” which has lime flavor. Luckily, Sascha drank that for me.
Right after ordering our meal some people came in and and started setting up speakers and a sound/mixer system. This was promising for some live music. But we were soon confronted with the reality of a local DJ (with two backups) starting music. After listening to the barrage of music for a half hour we unanimously decided that this was the worst DJ ever. He had a good selection of music, but about every 30-60 seconds he’d put in some obnoxious sound-effect and switch songs. Even the locals departed in droves.