Saba, St. Eustacius, St. Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat are a chain of 5 small volcanic islands between St. Martin and Guadeloupe. Also known as ‘the islands that brush the clouds‘ because their mountain peaks, ranging in height from roughly 2,000 to 5,000 feet (600 to 1,500 meters) literally touch the clouds on most days. With such a romantic name, these islands sound very enchanting to us and we’ve been itching to go and explore them for some time now. But I’m getting ahead of myself and must first explain, as promised in my last post, what’s next for the crew of Taka Trois.
Strictly speaking from a calendar perspective, we are now at the end of our ‘sabbatical year’ and it will soon be time for us to get back to work. Patrice has been actively seeking out consulting possibilities in water resources both here in the Caribbean and in Europe, but until it becomes more clear where the best options lie, our future is still somewhat in limbo. We hope to divide our time between our two favorite saints (Saint Martin and Saint Nom la Bretèche), but the work will eventually determine exactly how that happens.
For the past month we’ve been hanging out here in St. Martin making improvements on the boat, getting to know the island and following up on some work leads. However, before hurricane season starts in June and work begins to take up our time, we’re going to do some more cruising and extend our sabbatical year a bit.
As we have several reasons to be in Guadeloupe by the end of next week, we thought we’d indulge ourselves and sail there via these intriguing-sounding five islands and spend a day or two at each one getting a little taste of what they’re like. This plan has the added advantage of no night sails as we can easily island-hop from one to one in a few hours.
The disadvantage however, means spending lots of time in immigration and customs offices as except for St. Kitts and Nevis which are the same country, we will have to check in and out of each island. No worries, Patrice has now had a lot of experience with these custom officials and is quite adept at charming them, especially when 'said official' is of the female persuasion...
So we’re off again. First stop and the subject of my next post: Saba.
Strictly speaking from a calendar perspective, we are now at the end of our ‘sabbatical year’ and it will soon be time for us to get back to work. Patrice has been actively seeking out consulting possibilities in water resources both here in the Caribbean and in Europe, but until it becomes more clear where the best options lie, our future is still somewhat in limbo. We hope to divide our time between our two favorite saints (Saint Martin and Saint Nom la Bretèche), but the work will eventually determine exactly how that happens.
For the past month we’ve been hanging out here in St. Martin making improvements on the boat, getting to know the island and following up on some work leads. However, before hurricane season starts in June and work begins to take up our time, we’re going to do some more cruising and extend our sabbatical year a bit.
As we have several reasons to be in Guadeloupe by the end of next week, we thought we’d indulge ourselves and sail there via these intriguing-sounding five islands and spend a day or two at each one getting a little taste of what they’re like. This plan has the added advantage of no night sails as we can easily island-hop from one to one in a few hours.
The disadvantage however, means spending lots of time in immigration and customs offices as except for St. Kitts and Nevis which are the same country, we will have to check in and out of each island. No worries, Patrice has now had a lot of experience with these custom officials and is quite adept at charming them, especially when 'said official' is of the female persuasion...
So we’re off again. First stop and the subject of my next post: Saba.
View of Montserrat from Antigua last February--one of the 5 islands that 'brush the clouds.'
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