Happy Father's Day! We celebrated over coffee and breakfast overlooking Frigate Bay. What a beautiful place to be on Father's Day. My dad got a little jipped on the gifts - being restricted on what we could travel with, he got a card from each of us (Grant's included a coozie that plays the theme from Rocky when you push a button), a pair of underwear (knowing he might need a clean pair by now), and some instant coffee (inside joke that maybe only the Schaefers would appreciate having to do with the last time we went sailing and mom dropped the coffee pot overboard and dad had to scuba down to retrieve it). Honestly what more could a dad want on Father's Day? He wants a day where everything works on the boat and water.
Our boat carries 206 gallons of water. That covers washing dishes, showers, rinsing off the deck, washing hands, you name it. It sounds like a lot, but 5 people go through a lot of water in one week, even taking Navy showers. We planned to stop in the marina in St. Kitts to take on water. But our good friends Greg and Neil that we met yesterday set us up and offered to put water in our boat using their hose if we could get close enough to the beach for their hose to reach. Nice to have a catamaran that only draws 3 feet (that means we can get into 3 feet of water before we hit the bottom)...we drove the boat right up to the shore and beached the bow leaving the props in deep enough water so they didn't touch bottom. Neil ran the hose out to us and we took on 1200 pounds of water. We were the highlight of the kids on the beach who were watching this in action...you would have thought we were out of a James Bond movie or something. So if you are ever in Nevis, visit the Yachtsman's Grill and tell Greg and Neil we sent you - great people.
So we left Nevis and motored over to Whitehouse Bay at the southwest end of St. Kitts. It took us a few times to set the anchor and get it right because it is a rocky bottom next to a reef and the current was really strong. We anchored in about 15 feet of water and can see the bottom when the wind is not gusting. Grant and Mom snorkeled around the boat and found a wreck just about 20 feet from us full of coral and cool fish.
Being the history buff that he is, Dad really wanted to see Brimstone Hill at the north end of the island, so we called our new buddy Percy (local taxi driver who came with recommendations from Jackie and Al at the charter company). Percy was awesome. He gave us a tour of the island on the way. For those of you with Marriott points, you might want to check out the resort in St. Kitts - it is on the Atlantic side and looks amazing.
The Brimstone Hill Fortress is a UNESCO world heritage site. We've been to just about every fort, major historical site and national monument everywhere we've ever gone because my dad loves this stuff. This place turned out to be really awesome. It is a huge fortress built in the 1600s by the British and their African slaves. The first cannons were mounted at the fort in 1690. There were lots of times where different people tried to take over St kitts to control the sugar production in the Caribbean. The French took over the fortress in 1782, but the next year the island was returned to the British under the Treaty of Versailles. That is when the British got smart and mounted cannons from every possible location around the fort. It remained an active fortress until 1852 when the British troops left St. Kitts. It was really pretty much abandoned then and 100 years later the people on the island formed a society to restore the fortress. In 1973 Prince Charles came to St. Kitts to reopen the fort as a historical site and it became a national park. In 1983 St. Kitts and Nevis gained their independence from England.
We spent about 3 hours at Brimstone Hill before Percy drove us back to Whitehouse Bay. On our way back we stopped at Best Buy (not the electronics store) to get some more provisions for our trip. It was a good supermarket so we stocked up on more essentials like peanut butter, crackers, carrots, ranch dressing, stuff for salad, knock off raisin bran and lucky charms, long life milk (the kind you get on the shelf - not the best but not too bad on cereal and when mixed in stuff), and fruit juice.
When we got back to our dinghy at Whitehouse Bay, we had planned on having drinks and dinner at a new sunset bar right at the beach. It has a really nice atmosphere with fancy lights and a dock with soft chairs right on the water. But they were not accommodating to us at all - they didn't want us to use their dinghy dock to tie up our dinghy because it interferes with their lights and the "ambiance". Drinks were $12 for a soda and $15 for a rum runner and they didn't serve food. The manager was a total jerk, so we left and headed back to our boat for a much nicer environment on our own boat. Mom was ticked off that they claim to have the ambiance of boats in the bay (ours) but won't cater to boaters (us). It was a bit ironic. I guess they are just opening and haven't figured out that they will get a lot of business from boaters because the boats are the only thing at this end of the island. Mom reamed them on Facebook and then we all felt better.
So all in all I think it turned out to be a pretty good Father's Day for my dad. Nothing broke on the boat today. He got to see Brimstone Hill. And he was able to spend the day with his three totally adorable, good natured, loving kids!
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