Catalina Sunshine

Thursday, April 9, 2015

ENGLISH HARBOUR

1115 hours, March 13, 2015, English Harbour, Antigua: We entered the relatively narrow entrance to English Harbour with Fort Berkely built on a narrow spit of land enclosing the Harbor to our Port, and the massive rock formation known as the Pillars of Hercules with ruins of the upper and lower Fort Charlotte, on our starboard. As we turned to port into the Harbor around Fort Berkely Point, we could see stern tied yachts lined up around the quay wall at Nelson's Dockyard with its two story stone 17th century barracks and other dockyard buildings behind. We were instantly transported back in time. It was as though you could almost see and hear English sailors tending to their ships at the quay wall, and the marching of troops around the barracks with a glimpse of their bright colored uniforms in the distance. History was alive in this beautiful special Harbor with its green foliage on the steep hills that surrounded it, with its white sand Galleon Beach which greeted us just inside the Harbor entrance, and with its turquoise colored water in Tank Bay behind the Dockyard.

The only anchorage available in the Harbor (with the exception of stern tying at the quay wall) is at Freeman Bay adjacent to Galleon Beach just inside the entrance to the Harbor, except one spot I had seen at entrance to Tank Bay when we were their earlier in the week. As we rounded the Dockyard on its back side I crossed my fingers as the entrance to Tank Bay came into view. It was vacant! This was a tight spot for our boat. We were at least 20 ft. longer than the sailboat I had seen in this spot earlier. We had to find a place to drop the anchor with out interfering with the anchors of the boats stern tied to the quay wall, and not swing into the shore on either side with wind shifts. It took us two tries but we got it. Tucked back in the Harbor as we were it was flat even though the winds were blowing 25 nmph. It was a pleasant relief from the hour we had spent "easting" directly into 8 ft. seas along the south side of the Island on our trip from Jolly Harbour.

What a perfect anchorage. On the Dockyard side we had the Admiral's Inn with the Pillars Restaurant, and on the opposite side we had the Admiral's Inn Gunpowder Suites and pool with the poolside Boom Restaurant on a hill overlooking the mangroves at the shoreline next to us. The Admiral's Inn is in an historically renovated. 1700 century two story brick and stone building with the Admiral's Bar on the first floor. The Pillars Restaurant is an open air restaurant between the Inn and the water with a garden and small beach on both sides of a line of massive stone pillars and a moat like channel that are part of the ruins of a dockyard sail loft. The Gunpowder Suites are in a rehabilitated building that once housed gunpowder and was set across Tank Bay to protect the Dockyard from explosion. A small outboard passenger ferry ran the 150 ft. between the Inn's facilities on both sides of Tank Bay. The ferry, which ran on demand, passed within 15 ft. of our stern.

We ate our first meal in English Harbour at the Pillars Restaurant with a dock side table looking out on English Harbour and Catalina Sunshine. It was a great meal, and for us at least, a spectacular view.

English Harbour

Boats tied at the Quay Wall

Dockyard behind Quay Wall

Galleon Beach

Admiral's Inn

Pillars at Admiral's Inn

Gunpowder Suites

Dinner at Pillars Restaurant

Monday, April 6, 2015

0930 hours, March 10, 2015, Jolly Harbour, Antigua: We picked up a rental car to tour the Island. Ed and Cheryl had driven around the island a few days earlier and shared their experience. Based on this intelligence we decided to tour the northern part part of the island in the morning and spend most of the afternoon in the Falmouth and English Harbour area.

Antigua's Capitol, cruising ship and commercial port, is St. John's. St. John's is in need of rehabilitation. Unlike Basseterre on St. Kitts which was also an old town in need of rehabilitation St. John' had not built a new cruise ship terminal with an adjacent newly built shopping street like St. Kitts. Nor did they have a rehabilitated main shopping street like Phillipsburg on St. Martin.

Dickerson Bay, at the north west corner of the Island, has a white sand beach with turquoise water. The Bay is predominantly dominated by a Sandals Grande Resort which appeared nice but we did not stop to visit. The north end of Antigua is mostly protected by a coral reef. I had read that Jumby Bay on Long Island which sits within the waters protected by the reef was a high end Resort with beautiful beaches, and that this was a good cruising area. With 25 nmph east winds blowing the North Sound area, which has some east exposure, was windy and we saw no cruising boats in the area. We did find the North Sound Boatyard. This is a relatively newly constructed large facility with a 150 ton travel lift and an on concrete dry storage area. It looked like a well financed yard.

We had lunch at the Catamaran Hotel in Falmouth Harbour, overlooking the Harbor from the Harbor's north. After lunch we went to look at the big boats in Falmouth Harbour Marina and Antigua Yacht Club Marina. What we found were 100s of tradesman primping mega sailing yachts, mostly for the St. Barth Bucket Race the following week. There were people working on most every boat. The first Bucket Regatta was held in Nantucket in 1986. Between 1986 and 2001 it became the premier mega yacht regatta. In 2001 the torch was passed to Newport where a Bucket Regatta has been held every year since. The first St. Barth Bucket was held informally between four boats, one owned by Nelson Doubleday who was one of the original founders of the Nantucket Bucket in 1986. The stated goal for all the Bucket Regatta's is to "Win the Party". It's more about being there and showing off your mega yacht than winning the race, according to the race committee literature. However I bet the race committee has not convinced some of the most competitive people in the world that own these machines, that winning doesn't count.

Most of the boats at the Falmouth Marina had 20 to 40 ft. containers in a yard adjacent to the dock where they kept spare parts and in some cases a small machine shop in the container. The mega sailing yachts being primped included classic boats with lots of teak in their cabin and deck structures. Most of these classic looking boats had updated current masts and sail rigging. The most impressive looking of the boats in the Marina was the ultra modern Ahima. This 216 ft. sloop had a mast reaching 262 ft. above the deck. It's stern was open like many of the more recently designed smaller racing boats and differed from most of the recently designed large sailing yachts most all of which have aft raked transoms.

Knowing we were going to be in Antigua for at most of another week waiting for the seas to flatten for a passage further south, we left Falmouth and English ( which we will discuss in the next blog) Harbors with the plan to bring our boat around and spend our remaining time on Antigua here.

Lunch at Catamaran Hotel

Primping

Classic with current rig

Ashimsa bow

Ashimsa stern

Ashimsa rig

More Primping

Ashimsa

Sunday, April 5, 2015

JOLLY HARBOUR, WHERE ARE THE TRAWLERS

1830 hours, March 8, 2015, Jolly Harbour Antigua: We sat down at a Greek restaurant at the end of our dock in the Jolly Harbour Marina complex, for dinner and to watch the sun set. Their roasted lamb was great.

Jolly Harbour was designed with a Marina complex to serve recreational boaters less than 100 ft as the center piece, and with waterfront attached town houses and single family homes as the primary income generator for the developer. In support of both the marina users and the planned residential community the complex includes several restaurants and dock front bars, a large grocery store, two bank branch offices, and two car rental companies. All are located adjacent to the Marina. For boaters there is an adjacent boat yard with a large travel lift, and a Budget Marine Store. In addition the complex included a casino which was in a large building at the edge of the Docks but is now vacant. The town houses were built a number of years ago, and many are in need of refurbishment. Most of the single family home sites have never been built on. From a boater's standpoint, all of the support facilities, including Customs and Immigration, are in the complex and easily accessible.

When we arrived the Marina was filled with sailboats, many from Canada. With the exception of two fishing type power boats less than 40 ft. we were the only power boat in the marina. In going through Customs we ran into a couple with a Kadey Krogen who had been in the Caribbean for four years traveling between Trindad where they summered just below the hurricane zone, and Puerto Rico. On their first year in the Caribbean they had asked the same question we had, "Where are all the trawlers?". They had noted as we had, the advertising and the articles in the boating magazines about trawlers traveling the world. The next said "I hope you like sailboat folks, if you don't you won't have any friends." We had run into a couple with a 47 ft. Defever in St. Martin, who had also been in the Caribbean for four years, and they had the same comments.

While touring the the Harbor the day after our arrival,we saw Slowdown on a mooring, but Ed and Cheryl were not aboard. Ed and Cheryl stopped by our boat in their dingy latter that day and we had a chance to catch up at dinner, including stories about their 11 hour passage from St. Kitts where we had last seen them. We had a great pizza at an Italian restaurant on the water next door to the Customs building in the Harbor.

Only power cruiser in Jolly Harbour

Kadey Krogen one of the less than 10 Trawlers we've seen

THE BEST OF BAD WEATHER DAYS

0600 hours, March 8, 2015, Nevis: We headed through The Narrows for a windward passage to Antigua 50 nm to the east. During the 12 days we had been at St. Kitts and Nevis, I had talked with Chris Parker at least 5 times looking for a window. Before moving to Nevis two days earlier Chris had said this day, March 8th, would be the best of the bad weather days that had been with us for the last 12 days and would be better than any of the days for the next week.

As Chris predicted we experienced seven foot plus seas with an 8 second interval. Winds were blowing at 17 when we left and were a constant 22 nmph as we approached Antigua. During the passage we had two rain squalls with gusts of 30 nmph. The swell was due east and our course was slightly south of due east giving us a little edge in these short seas. With the deep entry of Catalina Sunshine with her steep "V" extending to the bottom of the keel just aft of the bow, she does not pound. Although the spray rails make noise as they enter the water they don't pound. Notwithstanding, straight into these waves there was a significant upward thrust as we entered each wave. There were two twelve pound exercise weights in the pilot house that were adrift and went airborne on the first wave we entered straight on. As our auto pilot veered from time to time and our course was just south of due east, we took a number of waves straight on. Fortunately we were able to take the majority of waves at enough of an angle that upward motion was less severe and we averaged 8.3 nmph, only a little less than the 9 nmph we normally average.

Riding up the wave

The bottom of the trough

Arriving Jolly Harbour

Looking out to sea from Jolly Harbour

NEVIS

1000 hours, March 6, 2015, White House Bay, St. Kitts: After 10 windy days we lifted our anchor
and headed south on a short passage to Nevis.

The combined nation of St. Kitts and Nevis is a constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth, with Queen Elizabeth as Head of State and represented by a Governor General.
The two Islands are separated by The Narrows, a two mile wide channel. The Island is approximately 8 miles long and 6 miles wide with Mt. Nevis in nearly the center. Mt. Nevis which is 3232 feet high, loomed over the hills at the south end of St. Kitts which we had been looking at for the last ten days. On most of these days their was a cloud hiding the top of the mountain. Today there were no clouds and we could see the beautiful green island with all of its mountain. The main anchorage is between the Island's principle town, Charlestown on the south, and the Four Seasons Hotel on Pinney's Beach on the north. Between these two points there is a beautiful nearly three mile long beach.

As we anchored along the beach in relatively calm water we wished we had left White House Bay earlier. Given that winds were still in the 25 nmph range from the east I was surprised how well this relative small Island and it's Mountain protected the lee side of this Island. Even with the calm lee we needed our rocker stoppers to dampen the waves from the ferry boats that ran between St. Kitts and Charlestown every hour or so. We had not needed them in White House Bay even with the 45 nmph wind gusts we had experienced.

The Four Season is a beautiful Hotel on a great beach.

Pinney's Beach

Beach at Four Seasons Resort

One of the pools at Four Seasons Resort

Beach at Four Seasons Resort

CHRISTMAS WINDS STILL BLOWING

0430 hours, March 2, 2015, White House Bay, St. Kitts: We were awoke by 45 nmph wind gusts. I could see the strength of the wind from the B&G wind monitor in our cabin, but scrambled to the pilot house to see our anchor position. I set the anchor position on my Simrad chart plotter when I drop the anchor. The trail feature provides a pattern of where we have swung, shows the boats current position, and provides a measurement from where the anchor was dropped to where we currently sitting. Although we were at the far edge of the anchor pattern we had not drug. I use the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate what the distance should be, knowing the amount of chain I have let out and the death of the water and the height of my bow above the water. As I almost always use a 5 to 1 scope or greater (in this case 6.45 to 1), the horizontal distance is not much less than the length of deployed chain. In this case the deployed chain was 200 ft. and the calculated horizontal distance is 197 ft.

I next checked the bridle and it's snubbers. Both snubbers had sheared and nylon bridle had stretched significantly almost depleting the the 3 ft. of chain I had looped over the chain grabber at the end of the bridle.

We have a 132 lb Ultra anchor and before the trip I upgraded from 3/8" to 1/2" high test chain. We have never drug and the only times we have had to reset the anchor is when I misjudged the swing with respect to other boats or obstacles. The chain grabber and the bridle/ snubber system were also purchased from Quickline who I had purchased the Ultra anchor from. After a couple of rounds of e-mails with Quickline we decided to upgrade the bridle from 3/4" to 1" line and use a correspondingly larger snubber. Fortunately I had the material on board to make up the bridle.

We continued to get gusts as high as 45 nmph during the day. The gusts were directly offshore and as we were no more than 1000 ft. from the shore, there was very little rolling. We would be in White House Bay for a total of 10 days, and two more in Nevis, waiting for the winds to drop below 20 nmph and the seas to get down to 6 ft.

While we waited out the wind many large boats came and left. I tracked the departure of a 138 ft. sloop on AIS as they went around St. Kitts on a track to St. Barth. I called them on VHF once they were away from the Island and asked them about the condition if the seas. They simply reported "awful". Buoy Weather had forecasted the seas that day to be from the east (the course to St. Barth is NNE) at 10' with an 9 second interval. This confirmed what I had thought, the folks leaving in bigger boats didn't know something I was unaware, but had schedules to keep and were forced to take on "awful" conditions. Other boats that came and went included Rising Sun, and Rosehearty. Rising Sun, which is 453 ft. and has 48,000 hp, was built for Larry Ellison CEO of Oracle and owner of the franchise that just won the America's Cup. A couple of years ago Ellison sold Rising Sun to David Geffen, the third partners and founder of DreamWorks, along with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. We had also seen Rising Sun in North Sound between Christmas and New Years. Rosehearty is a 170 Perini Navi ketch owned, or previously owned (understand it was for sale a year ago), by Ruper Murdoch. Murdoch is CEO and Chairman of the worlds second largest media conglomerate, News Corp.

White House & Ballast Bay Nevis behind

Rising Sun

Rosehearty

CHRISTOPHE HARBOUR

0930, February 27, 2015, Christophe Harbour, St. Kitts: Meet with David Nelson of Christophe Harbour for a tour of the project's 2500 acres. As a boater, architect and developer, everything about the project was of interest. David graciously drove us around for four hours explaining the Project and answering my insatiable questions.

The project includes almost the entire south eastern portion of the island, from just north of White House Bay, south. The development will feature a 300 acre harbor and mega-yacht marina with support marine related businesses, 2000 home sites most on or with views of the ocean, beaches, or harbor, six secluded beaches, a Tom Fazio championship golf course, several five star hotels, and a collection restaurants and boutiques.

They celebrated the opening of the mega-yacht docks the week before we arrived. There are a total of 23 slips for boats from 100 to 220 ft. Sale prices range from $1,875,000 to $3,000,000. They claim to have contracts on 14. The Pavilion and the Salt Plage where we had great dinners are both fully operational. The Park Hyatt, a 135-room resort in Banana Bay, is under construction and scheduled to open the end of the year. All of the lots except one have been sold along the magnificent Sandy Bank Bay with several already built and occupied, and another is under construction. The first waterfront house in the Harbor is under construction and all the lots in phase one sold. Phase two is scheduled for release this summer with the least expensive lot expected to be priced at $1,750,000. The are a number of hillside lots and non view lots behind Sandy Bank Beach which have been sold with houses built and occupied on several of them. The quality of the architecture, (which must go through an approval process by an architectural review board under control of the developer), the quality of the landscape architecture, and the quality of the completed construction were all excellent.

The only comparable to what they are creating at Christophe Harbour is St. Barth. However the differences are significant. There is only one public road that runs through the development which is the southern portion of St. Kitts. This road will run to a relocated ferry terminal which connects St. Kitts to the other part of this Island nation, Nevis, and Cockleshall Bay with its beach, which will remain public. Christophe Harbour will have a series gate graded communities, interconnecting with a private golf cart/bicycble path. The community will have its own new town which will be built behind the mega-yacht marina. The only development opportunities that exist on St. Barth are individual properties. You can't get to St. Barth with a private jet on a passenger jet airlines. The small short runway will only accommodate prop planes. St. Kitts has a international airport with VIP terminal to accommodate private jets. There are no golf courses on St. Barth. In addition to the already constructed mega-yacht marinas they are planning a second marina for larger boats under 100 ft. In addition to White House Bay where we stayed there is Ballast Bay immediately south. Both bays in combination create a large anchorage area with significantly calmer conditions then St. Barth.

According to David Nelson the country of St. Kitts/Nevis sought out a developer for this project, and is a partner in the development. The developer they choose were the principles of Kiawah Partners who have developed and managed Kiawah Island since they purchased the Island from a Kuwaiti led development company in 1988. The sea island is 12 miles south of City of Charleston. Under the development of Kiawah Partners, and it's CEO Buddy Darby, the 10,000 acre largely private gate guarded Kiawah Island currently has 7 championship golf courses, a private club, a 5-star hotel, 10 miles of beach front, 30 miles of river front, several world-class restaurants, sporting, shopping and culture activities, and 4600 property-owner families. The Island hosted the 1991 Ryder's Cup and the 2012 PGA Championship.

They estimate it will take 20 years to build out Christophe Harbour. My guest it will probably take longer. The sales strategy they are following is to sell some of the most expensive property first, which helps with cash flow and builds value for the less expensive home sites and slips to follow. They have done very little advertising to date concentrating on getting the word out at wealth management seminars and the like, to the height end buyers they are looking for. The build out has started a few houses at a time allowing them to slowly build a skilled workforce on the Island which will provide better costs then the imported labor needed to achieve the quality of the buildout to date.

This is a one of a kind site, and the developers appear to be doing everything right. The risk for all involved is how long it will take to build-out, and what future economic downturns will do to the world economy and how this will effect the project's development.