Anguilla

We had a short stop in St Maarten on the way back from St Barts. While waiting our turn for the lift bridge, we had to jockey our position with Nanuman. On his deck I would guess it was 80ft long and about 12" in diameter. His spinnaker pole probably cost as much as might whole boat. Nanuman is a brand new replica of the famous J boat Endeavour II. An 80ft spinnaker pole and no life lines. Once through the bridge and into the breeze, Joan & I hoisted our sails for a great sail to Anguilla. We watched Nanuman motor off to St Barts for their 100ft plus only boat race.

We are only allowed to overnight anchor at one spot in Anguilla and it's not really the commercial centre so one of the things that we did was a taxi tour of the island. Because of my building construction background, I was pumping the taxi drive on info for the cost of building on Anguilla. Stew Jones take note, how much work would you be able to do if a concrete block costs $20.00 instead of our $2.00 or a yard of concrete costs $600.00 instead of our $100.00 dollars in Canada. The taxi ride was maybe a little bit short of our 2 hrs promised but then the taxi driver is paying $10.00 a gallon for his gas compared to our $4.00. Anguilla still officially belongs to Britain and the 14,000 inhabitants have no interest in Independence. Anguilla has decided its tourist market will be low volume, high end and as such has some pretty fancy resorts which we saw on our taxi tour. (Joan's kind of place). We did our customs work, clearing out of Anguilla, leaving at midnight for the night crossing to the BVI's. 14hrs later, we clearing customs again to get back into the BVI's.

We have had a hard time these past 2 weeks trying to keep in touch as a sailing regatta starts this week in the BVI's and dockage at a marina is hard to get. Anchoring is great and cheap but leaves you without internet. Will be exploring spots we missed when last in the BVI's and revisiting those places that we especially liked such as Deadman's Bay where Joan had a relaxing time floating the afternoon away. All too soon, it will be time to plan the trip home.