In the many years we spent exploring the Caribbean we'd never made it to St. Bartholemy. During our years of flying, St. Barth's was intriguing but off limits to us as the runway is renowned in the aviation world for being one of the toughest to handle. The French agree as they insist on you taking a course and annual test ride with an instuctor to be able to land there. Without good diving there, we've never had enough reason to get the proper certification to take our airplane in there.
So now we sail from St. Martin to St. Barth's to spend our first few days on this Oyster 575. It's a beautiful yacht, hull #2 off the line, and crewed by a delightful couple, Andy and Elli. They handle the yacht expertly in getting us out of the harbor in St. Martin and on our way over to St. Barth's. It took a little longer than we had planned to get there as the winds weren't as favorable as we expected. So who's in a hurry?
Anchoring outside the harbor, in Gustavia, we found it a very nice place to stop for a few days. Lot's of huge yachts all around us so you easily see this is a popular destination. We set off for town the next morning and enjoyed our first visit to this wonderful island. A stop at a local gourmet provisioner (American Gourmet Yacht Provisioning) yielded a recommendation for lunch at Do Brazil, a fantastic restaurant right on Shell Beach. Soaking up the view of the beach with its azure water we took some photos with our iPhones to send to friends (yes, there was free WiFi at the restaurant too!) while we enjoyed our lunch.
It took many years but we finally found our way to St. Barth's and it made our Valentine's Day 2011 very special.