St Barthelemy - Caribbean Glitterati!

Tuesday 4th December was a BIG day for us. We had finally secured our Australian registration papers and would be leaving the comforting and familiar island of Saint Martin to start our voyage down the Leeward and Windward Island chains, over to the ABCs (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao), through the Panama Canal and then across the Pacific ocean, back to the east coast of Australia.

Our first port of call to ease into such a trip was St Barths, a tiny island 40nm from Saint Martin, famous for its glitz, glamour and well healed visitors.

Mike replacing our French flag with our Australian flag. Oi Oi Oi!

Saint Martin in the background. Trawling a line to see if we can catch supper - no go unfortunately...

The captain, trimming the sails.







We enjoyed a quiet night in a beautiful anchorage called Anse Colombier. With 5 neighbouring boats and loads of sea turtles in the waters around us, it was a great, low-key introduction to St Barths.

 And the competition begins...

This is Eclipse - the world's largest privately owned yacht - at 163.5 meters and is owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.  Eclipse has two helicopter pads, 24 guest cabins, two swimming pools, several hot tubs and a disco hall. It is also equipped with three launch boats and a mini-submarine that is capable of submerging to 50 metres. Approximately 70 crew members are needed to operate the yacht.

Entering Gustavia - The capital and main port of St Barths. It's a picture perfect, tidy, cute as a button little town.

While it was nice to be around the glitz and money, St Barths felt much closer to being in the the South of France than a Caribbean Island. So, we decided to seize what was supposed to be a good weather window, pull anchor early and head east to Barbuda.

We also decided to skip the 5 star restaurants and instead enjoy the views of St Barths from the comfort of our Lazy Bones.

Where in the World?

Now that the boat is almost in our hot little hands, we can move on to the real fun – planning our voyage and all of the great places we’ll stop along the way. We are currently in Saint Martin and plan to dedicate the rest of November to fitting out the boat - we have an energy deficit so will look to add some more solar panels as well as a new freezer. Both Anguilla and St Baths are within a day of us so we'll pop over to these islands during the upcoming weekends.

December 1st is our drop date to throw off the bow lines and head to Barbuda - map below for those in need of a Caribbean geography lesson. For those of you who are planning to join us, get your iCal’s synched and let’s lock in some dates! 

Caribbean Itinerary:

November - December: St Barths, Anguilla

December – January: Barbuda, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St Lucia

January – February: St Vincent & the Grenadines, Grenada, Bonaire

February – March: Aruba & San Blas Islands, Panama

March – Panama Canal Crossing, Galapagos

Post Panama crossing itinerary is in the works.

We'll take some photos and a video of our new boat as well as reveal her name in the next post - keep checking back!