Hurricane season!

We sailed back to Bequia Island from the Tobago Cays for two reasons.  First, we read that a tropical depression is coming and it is not yet entirely clear which way it will go and whether the depression will expand into a hurricane.  Every year from June to the end of November is hurricane season in the Caribbean.  Hurricanes are large tornadoes.  As soon as hurricanes form, the weather forecasters predict the path that the hurricane in question will take. They also predict how powerful these will become. On Bequia Island we can receive WiFi on the boat via a restaurant and therefore keep a close eye on everything.  Many hurricanes reach the Caribbean, because the seawater in that area is around 29 degrees at the end of the summer.  Hurricanes that form most in the eastern Atlantic often reach the Caribbean because they are carried by the trade winds over the warm waters.  The trade winds originate in Africa and carry the hurricane across the Atlantic Ocean.  Do we need to sail quickly to Grenada or the ABC islands?  Is the depression going over above us?  Second, we need provisions and on Bequia Island there is a small supermarket with a reasonable choice of products.  If we have to sail on quickly, we’ll need more provisions.  When we are back in Admiralty Bay of Bequia Island we read that the tropical storm, called Fiona, is on its way towards Sint Maarten, Saba and Sint Eustatius.  We can see this on the website of the US National Hurricane Centre.  The tropical storm is likely to arrive tomorrow and then move on toward Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Once in the bay we all had a need for other things.  We hung up sunshades so that there were several shady spots on board and everyone had their own favorite spot to keep an eye on the weather, read, watch movies or other activities.  Jeroen and Rajesh also tackled many small projects on the boat and I went out of my way in the kitchen making various flavours of ice cream; mango, passion fruit and forest fruits, baking focaccia bread, bread with olives and homemade yogurt.  It has not rained here for some time and our water tank is at 200 litres.  We decide to turn on the water maker.  At the end of the day Jeroen looked startled and it turns out that we had forgotten to press a button so that the batteries were also recharged, resulting in 300 litres of water richer, but 8 very empty batteries, which resulted in refrigerators and freezers not working. Not very clever of us.

In the evening, we regularly held a movie night and because of the heat inside the boat, Jeroen made a cinema in the cockpit.  Such a handy man!  To stretch our legs on land we visited Fort Hamilton.  Just north of Port Elizabeth, 300 feet above Admiralty Bay is Fort Hamilton, built in the 18th century to protect the Bay from attacks by American privateers and French marauders.  The fort is named after Alexander Hamilton, who was born on Nevis in 1755.  Today there are still a few cannons left and the fortress is gone, the place is just a breezy place to enjoy a beautiful view.

 After a week in Admiralty Bay we decided to sail to Union Island.  We had our water tanks refilled by Daffodil Marine Services.  So, expensive!  The cost for 875 litres of water was the same price as we normally pay for an entire year.  The last shopping has been done and at 10 o’clock we pick up the anchor.  It will be a nice quiet sailing trip of 5 hours. 

They told us that Chatham Bay is the favourite hangout place among Union Island locals and a popular anchorage for sailors.  Arriving in Chatham Bay, we see the beach is a beautiful thin crescent of white sand, backed by steep, forest-covered hills on the west side of the island.  The calm turquoise waters immediately invite you to go snorkelling.  On the outskirts, you will find a few simple bars and a restaurant.  We are here together with 1 other boat.  We immediately meet Alex, a local islander who grows and sells organic fruit and vegetables and organizes historical walking tours around the island.  We buy a papaya, mangoes and limes.  Alex went on to say that he had just heard that a tropical storm is on the way.  We had not seen this on the website of the American National Hurricane Centre last night.  Less than five minutes later, Seckie, a restaurant owner of the pink restaurant Seckie and Vanessa, is still trying to generate some income in this low season.  He has three beautiful red snappers and would like to prepare them for us in his restaurant.  We decide to accept his offer.  At 6.30 pm we are the only customers in his cosy cruisers restaurant. 

The restaurant’s WiFi allows us to investigate the tropical depression Alex spoke about.  The tropical depression formed in the Caribbean Sea and is expected to become Hurricane Hermine and route to the Gulf of Mexico.  According to the National Hurricane Center’s latest path, the storm is on its way to hit Jamaica and Cuba before turning east toward Florida.  What does this mean for us?  After comparing many sites and researching forecasts of the path the depression will take, it turns out we’re better off sailing back to Bequia Island.  Grenada and perhaps the ABC Islands will most likely be more affected by this storm than Bequia Island, where we will be more protected than here in Chatham Bay on Union Island.  We will sail back to Admiralty Bay in the morning where we will moor instead of anchoring on a mooring (a permanent structure to which a boat can be moored).  The next morning at 8am we raised anchor and enjoyed a beautiful sailing trip back to Bequia Island.  We have the boat ready storm as best as possible, by lashing everything properly, we check whether all hatches and portholes are properly closed and the dinghy is firmly attached, we also keep a close eye on the weather reports.  Wednesday and Thursday, we had stronger winds with gusts of up to 30 knots (force 7) and a lot of rain showers, but the “real” storm we had counted on did not come.  According to the National Hurricane Center’s latest path, the storm is now nearing hurricane strength and is on its way to hit Jamaica and Cuba before turning east toward Florida.  Florida must take into account a hurricane of the highest category 5. We hold our hearts!