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trying to reason with hurricane season

7/3/2013

Storm clouds over St. Martin, remnants from one of the first tropical waves of the season.

Well, the wind is blowin' harder now
Fifty knots or thereabouts
There's white caps on the ocean
And I'm watchin' for waterspouts

It's time to close the shutters
It's time to go inside
In a week I'll be in gay Paris
That's a mighty long airplane ride

Excerpt from Jimmy Buffet’s song “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season"

This image was taken from an advertisement promoting Trinidad as a good place to weather hurricane season. You can see their point... St. Martin on the other hand is obscured by historical tracks--yikes!

I am writing this from New York City where we have stopped to visit friends and family on our way home to Paris. Taka Trois is back in St. Martin all trussed up, battened down, stripped of sails and squeeky clean from bow to stern where she will remain until our official return next December. Our plan is to live in France from June through December and on the boat from December to June. Patrice will travel back and forth as work demands, so he will be able to check up on her every six weeks or so when he comes back to the island for consulting work.

In our absence she will be well looked after by the harbor officials and a local named ‘Sun’ who we have hired to do some weekly maintenance. He will also do what is necessary in case, God forbid, the unthinkable happens during this hurricane season. And no, Mr. Buffet, there is no 'trying to reason with a hurricane season,' there's just prayer.

Patrice and our buddy Sun just before we flew out

Our last few weeks onboard were largely taken up with cleaning, packing, sorting and making arrangements for Taka Trois' care. During this time Patrice also began his work Taka Technologies, our consulting company, in earnest following up on more leads and giving a good chunk of his time to Seven Seas Water, a desalination company out of Tampa Florida who has given him his first contract with a monthly retainer. Hallelujah!

All work and no play is never a good thing for the crew of Taka Trois, especially during the stinky hot, humid, mosquito infested rainy season in the islands. So we were very pleased to take some time off to do some sailing despite the weather and have some fun showing off our 'playground' (see previous post) to some close friends who came to stay with us for awhile. Of note was our first trip to Île Tintamarre, a small island which is now a nature reserve just a few short miles from Anse Marcel.

Île Tintamarre is a small island with an area of approximately 0.8 square kilometres (0.3 sq mi). It is about 3 kilometres (2 mi) from Saint Martin, and is administered as part of the French overseas collectivity of Saint Martin. The island has no human occupants, but has been inhabited in the past and once had it's own king, navy, and airline, but you'll have to wait until we come back next year to get the full story.

Most things, both good and bad do eventually come to an end and our time onboard Taka Trois ended mid-June, when we left the boat to fly up here. I'll be honest, leaving Taka Trois was easy. After living aboard for 13 months and 5 days, admittedly with a few breaks, we are both more than ready to become landlubbers again. Please don't misunderstand me, we still love sailing and we love living aboard, but a change of pace is much needed at the moment. So we're headed home to France to move back into our home, get to work on Taka Technologies and house renovations, see our friends who we have sorely missed during the past year and generally pick up the threads of our life there.

Before I officially end this account of our sabbatical year and move onto the next phase of this blog, I will be back with one last post sharing some thoughts and reflections on this past year, so stay tuned. I'm ending this post with some photos of the the marina where Taka Trois is moored and its wildlife. If you're in the mood to learn something about the island of St. Barths, scroll down to the post just before this one which, truth be told, should've been posted weeks ago, but, well, I've been a little busy...

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st. barths: discovering taka trois' playground

7/3/2013

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Saint Barthélemy aka St. Barts or St. Barths, reputedly named after Christopher Columbus’ brother Bartolomeo is a volcanic island fully encircled by shallow reefs with an area of 22.1 km² (8.5 mi²) and a population of roughly 9,000. It was first settled in the 17th century by the French then passed from British to Swedish hands and finally back to France in 1946. It is now an overseas ‘collectivity’ of France It has no industry to speak of, but has been a free port and a lucrative trading center, providing varied islands, colonial combatants of the day and pirates with war supplies and goods since the 1800s.

In the 20th century, it became the Caribbean’s most elite, most expensive island with a reputation as “an adult sandbox, where the rich and famous air-kiss over glasses of rosé.” Modern day 'pirates' and princes and even a few 'average Joes' are attracted to its many trendy wine bars, chichi boutiques, designer restaurants and of course the main attraction; its luscious white sand beaches fringed by the pool-blue waters of the Caribbean.
From Wikipedia and “36 hours in St. Barts” NY Times

Our favorite game while anchored in Anse Columbier, on St. Barths is to ‘spot the turtle.’ The sea around the island is full of these curious creatures (Hawksbill, Loggerheads and Green Turtles for those who want to know) who routinely come up to the surface to check us out. A little shy, they don’t stay on the surface for very long making it very challenging to get a good look at them and frustratingly difficult to snap a picture. Just as shy underwater, they stay away from us when we swim, but usually allow us to watch them grazing for food on the ocean floor from above.

Geographically speaking, as St. Barths is just 35 kilometers southeast and a few hours sail from St. Martin, we consider it to be a part of Taka Trois’ personal playground. It is also the perfect stopover when coming north to St. Martin from Antigua so consequently we have now anchored there several times, often enough to get a good feel for the place. Click on the map to the right to get a better view of 'our playground.'

We’ve discovered that like many islands, St. Barts has two sides--high season and low season. High season begins at Christmas and continues through Easter during which time the island puts on its ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ face and welcomes jet setters and super yachts from around the world for the ‘season.’ The streets of Gustavia, the main town is teeming with fancy jeeps and scooters, the port is chockablock with superyachts and its airport is becomes a beehive of activity and a magnet for thrill seekers as watching these puddle jumper planes clear the hill above the landing strip before dropping down to a runway the size of a band-aid is heart-stopping to say the least.

This was the scene we encountered last February the first time we stopped there and although it’s fascinating, it is also too crowded, a bit too posh for our style and too expensive. We didn’t stay long then, but thankfully we’ve now had two occasions to visit the island during the low season when the locals reclaim their island and a sense of tranquility descends. It is the perfect time to wander around in Gustavia, the pretty main town and admire the gingerbread-trimmed cottages, colorful boutiques and have a burger and a rum punch at ‘Le Select’ one of our favorite bars in the Caribbean.

We stopped there again on our way up from Antigua early May and met up with Mike and Tanya, our friends from Stormvale for the last time this year. We spent two days anchored near them in Anse Columbier before going our separate ways. With the beginning of the hurricane season on June 1st, all cruisers at this time are making their way towards their ‘safe’ place to wait out the season. Taka Trois will remain in St. Martin and Stormvale will rest in Norfolk, Virginia.

As we watched Stormvale sail out of the bay that last morning we couldn’t help but be moved when we realized that we had just said good-bye to the last of the boats which crossed with us this year. It was a ‘graduation’ of sorts especially knowing that the next ‘class’ of boats on the other side of the Atlantic is already getting ready and moving into position to cross on the Atlantic later this year or early next near. It also signals time for us to get back to St. Martin and prepare the boat for hurricane season and the end of our sabbatical year""g.

Stormvale heads north. Farewell dear friends, it's been a privilege sailing with you this year!

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trying to reason with hurricane season

st. barths: discovering taka trois' playground

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