February, 2006 -- Nevis

We are sitting off the beautiful little island of Nevis, enjoying the pleasant weather and balmy breezes. Today we have a sizable swell and a partly cloudy day, very comfortable for working outside. Orma has been doing some canvas repair and Cliff is putting a coat of varnish on the handrails and windshield. We are pointing at a beautiful beach a couple of miles long. Right in front of us a coconut grove runs along the beach.

Scattered further along this fabulous beach there are some beach restaurants and then a beautiful Four Seasons resort hotel. Last week there was quite a bit of water activity from the hotel -- waterskiing, banana boating, etc., but this week it is very quiet. We hear that a Ritz-Carlton is planned for this beach as well. A five-minute dinghy ride takes us into the town of Charleston, very old and quaint, where we can do internet, get groceries, and people watch.

There are about twenty or thirty boats, many of them charters, anchored along the beach, as well as two huge private yachts, a small cruise ship (SeaDream Yacht Club), and the SeaCloud II, a sailing cruise ship. We saw in a yacht magazine a listing for chartering the dark yacht in the photo, slightly smaller than the white yacht in the foreground and minus the helicopter. The weekly rental for yacht and crew, not including food and fuel, was $40,000 USD, which we thought was pricey, but not exorbitant for up to 12 passengers. But when we looked again, we had missed a zero and the charter price, exclusive of food and fuel, was actually $400,000 per week!!

There is an American Medical School here (as on many of the islands) and we have noticed many American and Canadian ex-pats who live on the island in big winter homes for wealthy snowbirds. There is also a big new Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) complex, from which we get perfect TV reception when we can stand to watch it. We think Nevis would be quite a nice place to own a home.

Nevisians take great pride in their country, its history and culture. We went inside an Anglican Church, still active, which was built in the early 1600's when it was a British colony, and saw gravestones in the cemetery dated as early as 1647.

The island is very clean -- there are litter wardens and a $500 fine for littering -- and for a population of 9000 we are amazed at the facilities they have -- a beautiful hospital, a nice library (where we did internet and email), a large new old folks home, two high schools, 50 churches, and many supermarkets, shops, and tourist facilities. It is politically a part of the country called St. Kitts and Nevis, but half the population of Nevis wants to separate.

The economy used to be sugar-based, but they no longer farm sugar and are now dependent on tourism and off-shore financial services. Several of the sugar plantations, dating back to the 1600's and 1700's, have been turned into luxury plantation house hotels. Yesterday we took a load of laundry to a place on the beach. Today we went back to pick it up. We were a bit concerned about landing the dinghy on the beach in the swell, but I guess we're getting good at it because we had no problem. The cost to wash and dry two loads was $35 USD. The price seems atrocious, but it is a necessary part of the cruising budget. We hand wash a few items on board, but it takes a lot of water and time and never seems to do a really good job.

We had a fun dinner and games night with the Moonbeam III family on Sunday. They are going to St. Martin now and sadly we may not connect again -- but you never know. We will keep track of them on their blogspot.

We had hoped to be in the Virgin Islands by now, and we actually started out last Saturday, but by the time we got to St. Kitts (2 hours) we decided the wind was too strong to fight all night on the Anegada Passage. Once you leave St. Kitts there is nowhere to stop if the conditions are bad except for the island of Saba, which is very steep-sided and has little protection from the waves. So we stayed overnight in the main harbour of BasseTerre then came back to Nevis, which is much nicer. The weather forecasts since then have still predicted brisk winds and seas, although after the fact it appears there have been a couple of days that would have been good to go. We are probably way too cautious and are going to have to get our nerve up or we'll never get home!