14. Barbados

Right after getting some nice stamps in our passports, we went ashore for a first inspection of the new Continent. We explored the little town, called Speightstown, next to the luxury holiday village and had a great celebration dinner with a live band. Finally, a relaxing evening without watches and a stable floor under our feet. That’s when we felt that we have arrived in the Caribbean. After a good night sleep, we then moved South to the Carlisle Bay where the capital Bridgetown is located. The Carlisle Bay is a very large but safe bay and has a long beach all along the coast. After a noisy night, as we accidentally anchored in a field of party boats, we moved to a nice spot just off the Barbados Cruising Club and the Radisson Blue Hotel. By then we did not know, but this would be our home for the next month. We could swim to the beach and spend the day just playing in the sand and swim. In the Carlisle Bay we also had the chance to snorkel with turtles for the first time. Every now and then there was a little head looking out of the water to see what’s happening outside. In the mornings we had special guests around our boat waking us up with their heavy breathing… race horses! We couldn’t believe it the first morning. We were not so far from the beach, but still a distance that not every good swimmer would do. Some mornings there where even ten to fifteen horses, each swimming together with its coach far out in the bay and back to the beach. It was a spectacle every morning and once we even went on the beach to see how they played in the water and got some pictures.

To buy food and supplies we had to cross the big bay by dinghy and stop in the heart of Bridgetown, literally between bridges. Our first impression of the Caribbean was friendly, colourful but calm and hot. However, we were shocked about the prices. To us, everything seemed very expensive, definitely as high as in Switzerland. On the other hand, live quality is high too on the island. The public busses are, Caribbean style with loud music, but quite efficiently organised and fairly rated. There are the official buses like in Europe with drivers in uniforms, schedules and proper bus stops. But then you also have the less official, but very efficient bus system where basically two guys that own a minibus made a business. One drives, the other collects the money from the passengers. The minibus will be filled with passengers until there is no space between one another. On these busses we could make a study about the influence of music on the driving style, which actually can… to most of the islands in the Caribbean. The louder and faster the music, the faster and more reckless the drive. Weirdly, we felt save all the time. Because as we were all squeezed in the bus with the other passengers, we felt like the airbag was already open, so nothing can happen.

Another interesting thing about Barbados is that it’s full of churches, but not like in Europe you have Catholics and Protestants and some other minor representations. With more than hundred religious denominations they have over three hundred churches on this small island. You can almost visit new church every single day of the year.

A few days later, our German friends (with Daniel who helped us with our fridge) we met in Mindelo arrived on their SERENITY and anchored near us. One day we set on an adventurous trip together to the southern side of the island and to visit the rum distillery Foursquare. To go there we had to take several different busses. The first seemed to be an old bus from North Korea, which sounded like a little propeller airplane when the bus driver accelerated. To reach the second bus we looked a little lost around the bus stop. So, one local guy explained us, that as we wanted to go to another parish (kind of county), we needed to catch the bus at the border of the parish, which is all up the hill at the end of town. We must have looked very lost as he immediately told us to follow him. He walked us in the middle of the day under the strong sun for quite a while up on a hill to the right bus stop and even managed to get one for us right away. This is just an example of the kindness of the people living in Barbados. Everywhere we went we felt safe and very welcomed, the people are open and curious and always good for chat.

Back on the boats, Daniel from SERENITY complaint several times about his anchor, the anchor looked good when in the sand, but it did not hold as it should. He even made a scientific assessment with an underwater camera. Since our departure in Italy, we had four anchors aboard, and one of them basically lying on deck. Chris has never been happy with it and threatened several times to just through it overboard. Well, after having been tested by the scientific SERENITY team, it turned out to be the perfect anchor for them. So, everybody was happy, Daniel had his new working anchor and we got finally rid of some weight. Sadly, they had to leave after a few days as they were headed to Antigua. Barbados might be paradise, but on a sailing boat without watermaker it can quick turn into hell. There is no yard or public marina on the island and therefore no place to fill up the water tank. SERENITY and her crew managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean with only a few hundred litres of water for the entire journey, plus a few days in Barbados. Before SERENITY left, we did something, we had already done once in Sicily, filling a friend’s water tank with our own made water. As you can imagine, the Caribbean is the perfect spot to make water just with solar power. After a few hours we were able to give SERENITY around 250 litres of nice perfectly clean water. As a thank you, we had our first live concert on JOLLY JUMPER with some lovely Irish tunes. Goodbyes are always sad, but thanks to the technology we have today, we can stay in contact and hope for a reunion in the future. We ended up staying for about a month at our anchoring spot in the Carlisle Bay. There we met for the first time our Danish and Norwegian friends Judith and Hakon from TOUCHÉ. We will then meet up with them later in Martinique. It was nice having neighbours like TOUCHÉ and SERENITY.

In Barbados we also had to say goodbye to our two crewmembers, Karim and Reto, who would continue their travel to Martinique. However, leaving the boat was not as easy as we imagined. As captain I am responsible for the crew, for what they do ashore and especially I am responsible that they leave the entered country again. Island countries in particular are very strict, they don’t want to have people staying on the island uncontrolled, too many bad experiences. In order to have Karim and Reto cleared out properly, we had to go to the immigration and customs offices at the big cruise ship terminal outside of Bridgetown. That’s where we felt like real tourist. Outside the cruise ship terminal you can buy overprized souvenirs and every taxi driver offers you an island tour. The building is huge, the docks are small and the cruise ships are huge again. The customs and immigration offices are located in the big terminal hall. We were lucky and there was no big cruise ship that has to be cleared in at that moment, otherwise this could have taken a few hours. All the three of us entered a small office with a nice proudly uniformed lady. The whole procedure was not a big issue, but she made it very clear that until their take off with the plane, I was responsible for all their doings on the island. They should stay with us on the boat until then and behave accordingly. For the freedom’s sake and to have a bed and a nice shower after weeks, the guys stayed a few nights in a B&B and enjoyed the island by themselves.

If you travel without a deadline and set destinations you still have to set some targets and plan accordingly, especially when travelling on a sailing boat. At that point we had decided that we will go up North the Caribbean to the USA. As we would be entering the country on a private vessel and not on a commercial flight or ship, we would need a regular visa. Luckily, one of the largest US embassies of the Caribbean is located in Barbados and as we had to wait anyway a few weeks for the arrival of my parents, we thought it would be the best opportunity to apply there for a US visa. Apart from the costs, the whole process is very time and nerve consuming. It took me half a day to fill in and send all the forms online. I was all alone sitting at a small table in the bar of the Ocean Cruising Club, fighting with the Wi-Fi and the forms. I must have look very desperate as the waiter kept on offering me rum punches. I managed to wait until I had sent the last form, and managed to remember all the military activities Chris had during his service time. Of course, we were all not terrorist and listed all the countries we had been in the last months. And only after the last click I started enjoying the free drinks, I got out of compassion from the bar staff. Nevertheless, after a few hours that I had sent the forms, a light got on and I started cursing and getting anxious. Looking through our nice stamps in the passports collected until now, I realised that I had forgotten to put Morocco into the list of the countries we had visited. It takes me a lot to get worried… but I literarily started panicking. Morocco is not just a country like Germany or Spain, and the Americans might be interested in what the hell we did there since we clearly had the stamps in all our passports but our visit was not mentioned in the list, we had handed in to the US embassy. A week later we had our interview at the embassy, which a part from the queuing here and there and security instructions and restrictions went pretty straight forward. But until then I had sleepless nights, imagining what would happen if they would confront us with that question and what would happen to us… Guantanamo was one scary option. Fortunately, the lady behind the bullet proof glass did not care about our stamps and just kept our passports for further proceedings. Another ten days later we were able to pick them up at a UPS office in the middle of nowhere. The visa was in there and no questions asked.

For the four of us it was great having some relaxing weeks before my parents would arrive by the end of February. We actually hadn’t really been by ourselves since our crossing from Sicily to Gibraltar, which was 5 months earlier. But we were also happy to welcome my parents in the early morning on February 24. We hadn’t seen them for months now and the girls couldn’t get enough of them. However, from the first hours aboard my father started a strange rash on one side of the back. Thankfully he is an exemplary patient, so he went to the doctor the next day and got a direct diagnosis… shingles! What a nice thing to have on a sailing trip in the Caribbean, and especially on a relatively small boat with two little kids! Anyway, what was done was done… the girls had hugged their grandfather so much, it was just a matter of time to see if they got the chickenpox virus too. Apart from his health, the other concern we had now was how shall we proceed with our travels? Our plan was to sail over to Union Island in the Grenadines the next days. I knew that Barbados was very strict on health. For example, as I cleared ourselves in I had to confirm that all on board were healthy, we had no rats nor dead bodies (human) on board. So how about the Grenadines? In the end we got a certificate from the doctor that he was clear to go… but no one even cared in the Grenadines. Nevertheless, my father managed the whole thing pretty bravely and was like new a few weeks later.

On one of the last days of our stay on the beautiful island of Barbados was the islands main horse race that took place, the Lady Lane Barbados Gold Cup. The race track was in walking distance from our dinghy parking spot ashore. Of course, there was the rich elite with their nice dresses and special seating and catering, but it was a festival for all the locals. It was full of families; food stands and games for kids in the middle of the race track and even a parade. Like for a proper race you could bet on the different horses. We tried our best with a few one-dollar bets… but our luck did not express itself in a monetary way this day, we just had an incredible experience by watching those strong and beautiful animals, who we had seen training for a month near our boat, passing us by in full speed.

After over a month on the beautiful island of Barbados it was time to prepare our departure. To clear us out I had to go once again to the big cruise ship terminal in the north of Bridgetown. From the boat it was a 2-kilometre dinghy ride across the bay to the city centre and then another 20 minutes by bus. Unfortunately, a large AIDA cruise had arrived a few hours before, so all the officials were busy checking the ship and clear in the thousands of passengers. I had no other option than to wait and wait and wait. I got to know a few locals who worked for Tui and they told me a little bit more about growing up and living on the island. Approximately six hours later it was eventually my turn to get my papers stamped. By then it got dark and the way back to the boat by dinghy all alone was an adventure for itself, as I had to skip all the buoys and anchored boats in the complete darkness.

We left the Carlisle Bay on March 5th and set sail towards Union Island, the south island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It took us about 21 hours to get there, so we had to travel one night. Let’s say, our stomachs were all happy to arrive at the beautiful but crowded anchoring spot of Clifton.