Location: Nevis
A day on shore before the second great passage of our journey. Some might say the calm before the storm, for certainly that is what dominated our last overnight sail. The ever-present storm Brett was a name so loathsome we couldn’t help but feel hounded by it. Now however, is a different storm that looms over us, the feverish dreams of the last overnight passage, a bond of sea sickness and stray nets in props, of midnight sail anchorages and lonely watches manned by the few left able. So Nevis beckoned one last safe port before the plunge, the one with horses and bikes and funny foreign currency. The morning started foreboding enough with your good skipper awakened by his older sister to the knowledge that he was the skipper and was already late. So no music woke the crew, just the shaking of shoulders and, in a desperate measure, the tickling of feet. Yet the dingy’s roared to life on time, and three waves of eager sailors hit the shore in their last bid for peace before what had become the foreboding “Passage,” the last leg in a great if tiny odyssey. Two roads for horses to splash along in the surf with and one foolhardy band road for bikes to stretch lazy sun-burned legs and test just what “only one big hill” quite meant. Of the horsers for so they were termed, I can say rather little, but Jax informs me quite reliably that he was “chopping it up” three times, in fact. I found myself with the weary cyclists who discovered just what volcanic island meant in terms of incline. Gracious native hosts with icy pops and water on the road, and words of its all downhill from here, kept us going.
While one chasing pack of dogs nipping at our heels reminded us of a deadline back to sea. Still, The Montpelier Plantation and the Botanical Gardens offered relief, with lunch and lovely, if slightly impolite, parrots. Cows mooed our line of march, and goats bleated their salute, even as one lonely kid stood in a field all by their lonesome, the saddest and cutest lamb in the world. Here’s to his neglectful mother finding him. Scattered across Nevis’s volcanic face, each separate group of sailors found their own place for dinner. From Ocean Star herself to the Lime Beach dinner and bar. Now the weary land lubbers have returned for one last crash course on how to serve their intrepid vessels in their last great stretch. So here is over and out from our sea horse cowboys and pavement-hugging adventurers see you all in Antigua with luck and love.