It’s been a long time . . .
. . . but now we’re traveling again. What a relief.
Almost exactly two years ago we returned home from a trip that included Asia and Australia, leaving Australia just as it was closing its borders due to the pandemic. Because of all the restrictions brought about by COVID 19, Mary’s been suffering—not least of which because of the restrictions on travel. This past Christmas she gave me a little journal. Its cover title is To Travel is to Live, which might as well be her mantra.
As a reminder—or if you’re new here (Welcome, by the way!): You won’t be seeing any photos here. Instead, in this post you’ll see sketches, some of them rather rough, others a little more finished: images of people and things, of events that I think are significant and worth remembering. Sure, I take plenty of photos, but I use them as reference for my art work.
Two Weeks in the Caribbean
I’m updating this blog now that we’ve returned from a two-week cruise aboard the WindSurf, one of the ships in the Windstar cruise line. Here’s the itinerary. It begins on March 12, 2022:
3/12, 7:00pm: Depart Philipsburg, St Maarten
3/13, 8:00am-10:00pm: St John’s, Antigua
3/14: At sea
3/15, 8:00am-6:00pm: Soper’s Hole, Tortola, BVI. 7:00pm: Arrive at Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke, BVI
3/16, 3:00pm: Depart Jost Van Dyke. 6:00pm Arrive Virgin Gorda
3/17, 5:00pm: Depart Virgin Gorda
3/18, 8:00am-10:00pm: Gustavia, St Barthélemy
3/19, 6:00am-7:00pm: Philipsburg, St Maarten. Begin the second leg of the cruise.
3/20, 8:00am-5:00pm: Charlestown, St Kitts
3/21, 8:00am-5:00pm: Roseau, Dominica
3/22, 8:00am-5:00pm: Pigeon Island, St Lucia
3/23, 1:00pm-10:00pm: St. Johns, Antigua
3/24, 8:00am-10:00pm: Basseterre, St Kitts
3/25, 8:00-10:00pm: Gustavia, St Barthélemy
3/26: Debark at Philipsburg, St Maarten
Getting There
Having turned in early, we woke up around 3:00am on March 11 and had some of yesterday’s coffee and corn muffins. Our first flight was to Charlotte, at 5:00am. From there to St Martin. Everything went smoothly: no TSA hassles, all our paperwork was in order; smooth flights; smooth handling of arrival at the airport; no-hassle taxi.
We arrived at the hotel, the Hommage, a bit before 3 pm. Our room overlooks the bay. It’s a duplex with steep stairs. From the balcony you can see the barge I spied from the restaurant last night. It’s the kind of barge that’s used for building and repairing docks, and for dredging and salvage, so it was not unusual to see a crane on it. What was unusual and caught my eye was a damaged structure that apparently the crane had lifted onto the barge—an octagonal building two stories tall! It was in shambles: not much left of it beyond the framework and the double roof.
Saturday, March 12
We slept until ~8:00 and walked around the hotel. With all its “homage” art it reminds us of another “art lovers’ hotel,” the one in Wellington, New Zealand. The sides of this hotel’s buildings are decorated with copies of famous artists’ paintings, from Monet to Banksy. On the grounds there were some copies of Giacometti and some artists’ works I didn’t recognize, as well as original work.
We Begin the Cruise
The ship needs a mention: It is the WindSurf, a five-masted ship whose sails may be mainly for show, and you may be justified in thinking that’s hokey, but we have sailed on her before we have friends there, and we love her. She was docked in Philipsburg, on the Dutch side of Sint Maarten. To our happy surprise we were greeted at the gangplank by Andreas, the hotel manager! Hugs all around. On board we met many crew members from our previous travels.
There was a beautiful flower arrangement waiting for us in the cabin, along with two bottles of bubbly and a plate of fruit. Very nice. When I become competent to paint flowers well enough, I may add a picture of it to my collection.
With a lofting of her sails, we set off to our next destination that evening.
Sunday, March 13: Antigua
Change of itinerary due to high swells: St John’s, Antigua instead of Falmouth Harbor.
We’re docked right in town, next to two big cruise ships, a royal Caribbean and the Marina, an Oceania ship. Mary and I walked down to the pier and into town. I took my pocket sketchbook.
The first thing you see is “Antigua Exotic Bar/Free WiFi” with a fancy yacht pulled up to it. It’s a sight right out of an Anthony Bourdain TV episode.
No fancy tourist center here, just a utilitarian building to take care of immigration and customs, and a tiny red building, hardly big enough to carry the sign “Tourism Hospitality Booth.”
Pretty much everything in town was closed except for the bodegas, and people along the sides of the market square selling vegetables and sundries, as it’s Sunday. The town reminds us of Ambon, except more colorful . . . and poorer.
The market square is dominated by a tall, full-color statue of the first premier of Antigua and Barbuda.
I saw a young woman carrying a remarkable collection of empty plastic jugs. Turns out she and another young woman met a bearded, middle-aged man at a corner, where there was a sort of community water tap: a pipe sticking out of the ground, with a spigot, and a channel below, leading to the street. He sat there on an overturned bucket, filling the jugs: I guess their water for the day.
On a side street, overgrown with weeds, we saw a row of houses. One stood out from the rest. It had a sign by the door, “SALON,” and was a bit better cared for than its neighbors, and had obviously been enlarged with an addition in the back. A nice sign of progress.
pi Day, March 14
At sea today. Rather rough. Too windy to draw or write at my usual spot in the Compass Rose bar. Yesterday I spent a good deal of time drawing and painting scenes from the day. Today I tried copying one of the tiny sketches I’d done to one of the larger books—no luck. So I relaxed, did a legs workout in the gym, and read a book.
At one point the captain stopped the propellers and raised the sails—just to prove a point, I think. But even with this stiff, favorable wind the ship only made 6 knots.
Tuesday, March 15: Tortuga.
Woke up at Soper’s Hole, a cozy, sheltered bay favored by yachters, and known as a “gunkhole,” on the west of Tortola.
Like the harbor at St John’s, the first thing one saw on shore was a watering hole, this one significantly more posh than Antigua Exotic.
According to the itinerary the ship’s marina would be open for swimming off the stern, but the current was too strong. So we took a jitney to a lovely beach on the north side of the island.
On the way we went over a bridge at the outlet of stream near the shore. We got a kick out of how the kids in the school across the way had painted the rocks that protect the shoreline there:
On-board BBQ this evening: Great weather. Mary and some women seated near us were looking to gorge themselves on lobster tails, like on previous WindSurf cruises, and were complaining that there were none to be had.
At 8:30 pm we pulled anchor and sailed away.
Wednesday, March 16, Jost Van Dyke
This is a very small island, with a population of about 500. The Grand Harbor was full of sailboats, mostly twin-hulled, since they draw less in these shallow waters. Very picturesque.
From where we were moored, off the port side we saw a cluster of very posh modern buildings perched on the end of a peninsula. Is it a resort or a private residence we wondered.
Water was calm, so the watersports platform was lowered. Mary went down after breakfast and came in only for lunch. I went ashore just to see the hamlet. A few shops lined a single dirt road: nicknacks, scuba shop, bars, a lunch place, the ruins of a tiny church. Some of the ship’s passengers hired a car to take them to the Soggy Dollar bar, which boasted being the origin of the Painkiller, the cocktail everyone on board was ordering. It sounded too sweet for me.
Pulled anchor at 3:00 and the captain unfurled the ship’s sails. The wind was quite strong, so not all of them were set.
Special dinner for us tonight at Candles. The veal chop is still very good.
Thursday, St. Patrick’s Day: Virgin Gorda and the Private Beach Party
Overnight we moored off of Virgin Gorda, where Windstar has a private beach. Mary and I took a tender to the beach after breakfast, around 10:00 am. Truly lovely.
While one crew was working on setting up for food and drink service, another had set up three lines of lounge chairs with beach umbrellas. After claiming a spot we went into the water. The big trampoline float was there, tethered to two of their closed-foam floating mats. The two-man band was fun to listen to, and lunch was OK. Afterwards I went back to the ship for a shower and a nap. Mary stayed on, swimming until the very end. All in all, a very pleasant experience.
Sail-away was at 5 pm.
We arranged dinner at Stella, the fanciest of the ship’s dining venues, and I’d forgotten to change from my shorts to long pants. When I returned, properly dressed, I found it amusing that the guy in the next table kicked off his shoes after he sat down. (Mary is so understanding of me having my little sketchbook at the ready.)
Friday, March 18: Gustavia, St. Barthélemy
For most passengers this is the last day of the cruise. They leave tomorrow morning from St. Maarten.
St. Barth’s is hosting their Bucket Regatta (March 16–20), so we got to see an amazing number of fancy boats in the harbor of Gustavia. The sailing yachts, though, were the most beautiful, to my eyes.
At the end of one of the races an enormous sailing yacht came hot-dogging toward the ship, passing just a few meters from the stern. Amazing!
We rented an ATV drove all around St Barth’s. In Mary’s terms, we had a good “walkabout”: we saw the place where approaching planes make their steep downhill landing, the Lorient neighborhood, the Morne du Vitet . . . so pretty much the entire island. Truth be told, though, for us, ATV-ing is less fun than it’s made out to be.
St. Barth’s itself? Well, I’ll hold off judgement until next week’s visit. To read that, click here https://kotrch.com/caribbean-cruise-week-2/.