Guadeloupe to Montserrat to St. Kitts

May 8, 2014

We left beautiful Guadeloupe, with the clearest water we’ve seen yet, heading towards Montserrat first thing this morning.  We sailed the entire 40 miles – nice, nice weather.  Montserrat has an active volcano on it and there is an “exclusion zone” where we cannot anchor, just in case the volcano decides to become active.  It was the first active volcano we’ve seen.  We saw one on Guadeloupe but it was a long way away from us and we didn’t see anything other than just a mountain.  Well the volcano on Montserrat still has pockets of steam coming out of it and it is located very close to the shore so we were able to sail very close to land and see the destruction it has caused in the past.  We saw the town that had to be evacuated and deserted.  Most of the structures looked fine but with the binoculars you could see the roofs only of some houses and churches, buried in ash. 

We are in a nice anchorage, just at the border of the “exclusion zone” and very close to the beach.  We are also downwind of the sulfur smell coming out of the volcano.  We had lunch and decided the smell would not be fun for an overnight stay so we raised the anchor and continued on to St. Kitts.  Fortunately, we had stayed at the St. Kitts anchorage and knew it well – since we wouldn’t be arriving until well after dark.  We dropped the anchor at about midnight and was ready to go to bed.