Monday 15th April 2019

On Wednesday we left the superyachts of Antigua, for, if possible, the even more opulent world of St Barts. In the immortal words of ABBA, it certainly is, at least around here, a rich mans world.

We are anchored off the west coast of St Barts, it is windy and the fetch combined with a bit of a swell is making things rather uncomfortable. The conditions are not improved by the continuous wake of large fast tenders racing back and forth from their luxuriant motherships.

The most luxurious of all is Le Grand Bleu, who at 113m long is one of the largest private yachts in the world and on her deck has, indulgently, a 22m sailing yacht (that’s 5m longer than Raya) and a 20m motor yacht. If Wikipedia is to be believed it was exchanged in payment for a lost bet between two Russian oligarchs.

Just plain greedy

Despite all this and the rocky anchorage outside Gustavia’s harbour, we are loving it here. From the efficient customs check in, to the restaurant staff, to the well stocked supermarket everything has been friendly and very french and unlike some of the French islands we have been to everyone is happy to speak English. Despite the superyachts in the harbour, the multi million pound villas that sit above us in the hills and the designer shops that line the Main Street, prices are unexpectidly reasonable. We decided to stay a while.

Not having local Sims for mobile data, we have been forced to spend time over long lazy lunches using the restaurants free and fast WiFi services. Not much beats eating fantastic food, with a cooling breeze and nice views.

Lunch time view

In fact overall St Barts has a very different vibe to the other Caribbean Islands we have visited, I decided to look into its history. Named by Christopher Columbus after his brother Bartomoleo. Little more than nine square miles of rugged rock, for years nobody paid much interest in it, even the local Caribs it appears only visited on occasional fishing trips. However in the 17C as the Europeans battled for dominance of the area, the French claimed the island and an increasing number of settlers began to live on its steep hills. In 1784 the French gave the islands to Sweden in exchange for trading rights in Gothenburg. As the only Swedish interest in the Caribbean they spent time and money modernising the island, building roads, forts and with no flat areas for plantations, they instead took advantage of it protected harbour to create a freeport, naming the capital Gustavia after the Swedish King. This in tun attracted more trade, legal and not so legal, and the island began to prosper. Eventually after a hundred years, with the population still mainly descendants from the original French occupation, Sweden returned the island to France and St Barts today is an ‘independent overseas collectivity’ and part of the French West Indies.

Pretty streets in Gustavia

Its main focus is now tourism, with many hotels and upmarket holiday villas. It restricts the number of large cruise boat visits and instead encourages cultural and sporting events. Including, another reason for us lingering here, the Voiles St Barts yacht regatta. For the past week amazing sleek racing yachts have been arriving and we have been enjoying watching the action as they prepare for first race today.

Racing Yacht Sorcha setting out for a sail

To escape the turbulence of the outer harbour anchorage we sailed around the corner to Colombier Bay. The water around St Barts is exceptionally clear and we had an enjoyable snorkel along the its rocky sides. As with the rest of the Caribbean there was little coral and few fish but an enjoyable swim never the less. The bay was still busy, escaping the large motor yachts seems impossible here and so when the next day a wind shift bought fierce gusts into the anchorage, we moved back to Gustavia to make ready for the overnight sail to the British Virgin Islands we plan for this evening.