Saint Barthélemy

While Statia wowed me with its history, St. Barts was the place to see the new glitzy and beautiful. 30 nautical miles NE of Statia stands the capital, Gustavia. We skipped over Gustavia and anchored in Colombier which was fairly protected. There are 15-18 mooring balls in place so boats don’t anchor in the seabed of grass. Anchors dig into & drag through sand, in turn destroying roots for seagrass and marine life. Sea turtles survive off of seagrass…. Thus, this anchorage is a protected turtle reserve. So of course, after sitting on our mooring ball for 15 minutes a 50 foot catamaran comes racing in and decides to drop anchor in between the rows of tightly packed mooring balls. I cringe and shake my head at the lack of consideration as to where they are about to anchor. The behemoth of a boat tried anchoring 3 times before the owners of the neighboring boats jumped up to tell them they were too close and to anchor elsewhere.

We took the 1.5 mile dinghy ride over to Gustavia to check in and explore the ritz and glitz. Sure enough, beautiful exorbitant yachts and even some ugly exorbitant yachts lined every inch of marine real estate. On land store after store filled with rows of rolexes shined brilliantly and clothes attached to price tags with far too many numbers before the decimal point hung perfectly. Boaters have a saying that BOAT is an acronym of a lifestyle…. Break Out Another Thousand – for boat repairs/maintenance what have you. The idea of shopping in St. Barts reminded me of this acronym. I found the gelato and local bar more accommodating to my preferences. We enjoyed Colombier immensely. Gustavia was a nice visit but really a busy and bumpy harbor to stay the night.Read more