Holiday with Jozi - part 1

 Jozi is our friend from Slovenija and she was sailing with us in Seychelles in 2010. She flew to Antigua on 20th of January and came on board in Jolly Harbor. Jolly Harbor was it's usual self - we were wet already as we were taking her with the dinghy to our boat. And then the next day when we went to the shop and again in the afternoon. It looks like this years norm is ten showers per day.

 All the colors of Jolly Harbor

 Already the first evening after couple of pina coladas we made a plan - to sail north to st.Barth and Sint Maarten, then return to Antigua and sail to Barbuda and back. This seemed like a good plan for two week holiday.

So the next evening after dinner we set the sails for our night passage to St.Barth. It is some 70+ miles from Antigua and so not possible to make it in the daylight. And again the weather was not our friend - we were sailing from one shower to another, with strong gusts of wind in between. Both Tomaz and i were wet several times. We sailed only on reefed flock and reached St.Barth at around 9 in the morning. We dinghied to Gustavia and were quite disappointed - it was empty. Obviously all is closed on Sundays and there weren't even any people on the street. Worse yet - also the port was almost empty, maybe nowadays rich people toys are to big to fit.

This is how it looked only few years ago ....

 Disappointed that we didn't even managed to get some fresh baguettes we sailed on to Ile Fourchue - i was sure we were going to have some good snorkeling, there is no way the fish would know it's sunday.

Anchorage in Ile Fourchue

And it was still all there -  the peace, the wilderness of the rocky island and of course the fish. First snorkeling that afternoon was great, i even saw a baby nurse shark. And was unbelievably mad at myself for not taking the camera.

Next morning soon as the sun was high enough for good photos, we went snorkeling again. Again it was great, unfortunately nurse shark was nowhere to be seen. But there was plenty of other beauties.

This is Gray Angelfish

 And this one is French Angelfish

This is Great barracuda - this one we about 75 cm long

There were some lovely blue sponges

 And this one is called Rock beauty - what a suitable name

 Originally we planed to sail to Sint Maarten that afternoon, but there were storm clouds hanging around it all day. We were lucky to have sunny day, although less than 15 miles away. So we changed the plan and sailed back to St.Barth in the afternoon, to Anse de Colombier. We hoped to do some more snorkeling, watch the turtles, maybe go to Gustavia again and sail to Sint Maarten the next day. But the weather didn't want to cooperate.... Towards the evening rainy clouds reached St.Barth and we had a very wet and rolly night on anchor. Next morning the rain was gone but the sky was gray, so we skipped the snorkeling and Gustavia and sailed to Sint Maarten at around noon. But at least we saw some turtles, to our surprise there were non in Ile Fourchue, where we used to see them in huge numbers.

The photo is from the past years - This is how Anse de Colombier should look like.

 P.S- Some of the photos are from earlier years - thanks to Grega and Rok for contribution.