Tuesday morning, April 21. Goal - Acquire water to fill our tank so that we can continue sailing north. The nearest island was St. Barts, 3 miles south. St Martin was 8 miles north. Our Norwegian kayak buddy, Anoc, told us that St Barts was a little bit more relaxed about COVID-19 restrictions and that it would probably be our best bet to head that direction. He said, however, that we should try and be pretty stealth about it because we would not be allowed ashore if we were not cleared into customs, which of course we were not. He gave us a pro tip to consider - use the public bathroom faucets and shower spigot to fill up, then transport it back to your boat. He said people do it all the time.
We approached St. Barts, acutely aware that we could easily be stopped by customs officials and sent away immediately. We moseyed past Eclipse, the 540 ft megayacht, into the very crowded harbor. We ogled the helicopter on top and uniformed servers scurrying around five different levels with trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres for the Russian billionaire owner. We spotted a free mooring relatively close to the docks. Charlie and I hooked onto it quickly but not before we were being fussed at in French by the skipper moored to our right. He waved his finger back and forth and said something, we think, like “that’s not yours.” Turns out it was a privately owned mooring.. but we just had a few minutes of business to take care of and we’d be outta there. We smiled, nodded, thumbs upped, and shut off our engines.
In an effort to cut down on trash underway we had been putting all of our empty water bottles in a hatch below the helm. We told Charlie and Mills to go pack their backpacks with as many water bottles as they could fit. I did the same. Lee grabbed the 10 gallon cooler and we headed toward the public “water closets.”
Stay stealth. Blend in. Don’t look around. Don’t speak (American accents). Act like you're supposed to be there. We did our best. Filled up 26 water bottles and our cooler and sneakily hobbled back to our dinghy with our bright orange water cooler and weighted down backpacks. Round 1 began around 1pm and ended at 1:45pm. The filling of the bottles was the easy part. There was a learning curve with getting it into the watertank on board. We first tried positioning the cooler over the opening and depressing the nozzle (like at soccer practice) but that was a total fail. Thumb cramps and major spillage sent us to plan B. Lee started pouring the waterbottles in individually then we would refill each bottle in the cooler. After about 15 minutes we had an assembly line and operation “Recharge D’eau” was well underway! 🇫🇷 💧
Round 2 was much smoother, as was round 3, 4, 5, and 6 and by 5:30pm we really had the protocol mastered. Each trip = +15 gallons in the tank and -5 years being able to walk upright. Back and forth repeatedly as the tank went from 43gal to 58gal to 72gal to ... well you get it. Still no marine patrol. Even the French sailor that watched us intently for the first hour became bored with our regimen.
By 7pm we were full.... of water ....and out...of energy. The mooring ball owner had not returned yet and the sun went down... so we decided to take our chances and stay. We showered ( — 8gallons) for the first time in a few days, gobbled up some mahi tacos and crashed.
7am Wednesday-more stealth operatives. Lee snuck to the grocery store and restocked with ice, fruit, lunch meat, cereal, and a bunch of other stuff we didn’t need and returned just in time for the inevitable visit from the French border patrol! We believe that our “copains” from Ile Fourchue actually tattled on us. We saw them arrive on anchor just near us and within minutes the officer was at our boat. There’s no way in the crowded harbor they could have picked us out without being tipped off. The “officier” asked a few questions to which Lee answered ambiguously and acted very confused as Charlie and I rigged up the dinghy to hoist. The patrol circled our boat and, as kindly as possible, told us to “partir tout de suite” and that he would wait until we were out of sight. Au Revoir, Gustavia. Mission accomplie!
I can promise you Charlie won’t remember
how to calculate the sum of interior angles of a polygon.... but other valuable lessons were learned today.. he surely won’t forget!
Water Pirates