Day Six

This was a quiet day after the long sail of the day before. We motored down to Charlestown (all of about a mile) and picked up a mooring. We cleared customs and did some shopping. It was a depressing town. The people are nice but the poverty is obvious. There were three steps for clearing customs which took awhile. There was a small book store with novels and text books. It seemed to be the main source of literature for the island. Everything was sold in Caribbean dollars (unlike St. Barts where everything was in Euros – we all ended the trip with three currencies in our wallets).

We took a tour around the island with David Watusi who is 6'6” and writes Caribbean music when not driving his cab.

There were lots of ruins from sugar plantations and we got cool pictures of the old buildings and sugar presses.

The island economy is not doing well. David W. told us about the recent changes on the island (Four Seasons closing and scheduled flights from the US ending).


He took us to a beautiful restored plantation (now an upscale hotel) for lunch. It was expensive but very good. Once we got back to Charlestown Patti and David took a walk to an old slave market but there was not much left to see.

After we returned to the boat, we moved back to the mooring near Sunshine's to get Wifi to check the weather, email, etc. Kaylynn and Paula did a great job picking up the recalcitrant mooring. David played guitar after dinner and everyone sang. We went to bed early in preparation for a long sail the next day.