Tooth Fairy

The tooth fairy has been busy aboard these last days. Matthew lost his second tooth on Monday and was rewarded that night, then Elizabeth lost another incisor the next morning. Unlike Santa, the tooth fairy does not require a chimney to descend down and seems to have better navigational skills at finding children at sea than Mr. Claus.

The cruise ships finally left us in peace as the sun set on Tuesday. The P&O cruise ship Azura left first to a deafening series of easy listening covers, including “We’ll meet again” and “It’s Not Unusual” (for the two passengers aged less than 85) and reached a climax with “Rule Britannia” as she slipped. The neighbouring AidaLuna left to a less invasive “Sail Away” by Enya on a seemingly continuous loop. The peace lasted only as long as the darkness. By dawn, the 300m long Carnival Celebration was arriving, closely followed by another cruise ship and then the exclusive The World arrived. We left.

Passage to Montserrat was abaft the beam and fast. I wanted to see the devastation of this British Overseas Territory first hand so we monitored the Montserrat Volcano Observatory website prior to departure and saw we could pass the southern tip of the island and then run north past the former capital, Plymouth, in the “daytime transit only” zone. From afar, the volcano seemed to always have a lower cloud base and we were unsure whether it was smouldering or not. As we approached, it became increasingly obvious that it is smouldering hard. Vast ash flows have further engulfed the airport on the east coast so only the tip of one building remains visible. There is a gaping hole in the south-eastern side of the volcano and thick plumes of steam gush continuously from the exposed face.

Montserrat volcano shrouded in smoke

Rounding to the west side of the island, the ash flows appear to have further enlarged the coastline as none of the bays of our five year-old chart remained visible. The city has further been drowned beneath these sand-coloured flows which look like strangely beige glaciers creeping down from the summit. In the lee of the crater, the air is hazy, filled with fine ash and the stink of sulphur.

Remains of Plymouth, Montserrat

We had to continue to the northern tip to Little Bay to clear in, however, on arrival, the anchorage was untenable. We had seen no other yachts all day but watched a single sloop lying at anchor being rolled and wrenched around violently. We turned tail, hoisted our sails once more and set off for the next stop, Nevis.

Halfway to Nevis is the island of Redonda. This is now part of Antigua but has an interesting history. Before it was annexed, it was landed and claimed as an independent kingdom. The title “King” has been passed on to this day and is usually held by a literary person who will generally muster a landing party once during their ‘reign’.

Finally, two hours after nightfall and after 13 hours and 85nm of sailing, we dropped anchor off Charlestown, Nevis.