March 22 - St. Kitts and Nevis

We’re anchored off Carambola Beach on the island of St. Kitts for our beach barbecue.  This day is fun for passengers but a ton of work for the crew.  Early this morning they began tendering over to a beach club facility there. The tenders take over tables, dishes, silverware, cups and glasses, tablecloths, chafing dishes, and everything else to set up two lines of barbecue food.  They bring all the food from the ship including salads, veggies and desserts and meats and seafood to be grilled on barbecue grills ashore.  They bring several complete bar setups so people can order the beverages of their choice. Once everything is ready with tables and chairs under covered pavilions they begin tendering us ashore at our leisure. At noon a zodiac tows a surfboard to the shallow water, and bar and dining room staff stand in the water to serve up caviar and champagne to guests who wade in.  It’s a tremendous undertaking when I think about it, especially because around 3:30 PM they have to start bringing everything back to the ship.  Are we passengers spoiled or what?

Carambola Beach

The pavilion where the barbecue is held

I went ashore with a friend around noon.  Neither of us was interested in the caviar so we just went for the barbecue.  It was delicious, but as with all buffets it’s really easy to eat too much.  There was a steel band duo playing who were good but not like the group from yesterday in Antigua.  After we’d eaten and talked with other friends we all decided to go back to the ship. We weren’t interested in going in the water because the sun was very intense and we were all worried about getting burned. Later in the day I saw a few people on the ship who looked a lot like the lobsters that were grilled for us to eat at the barbecue. Ouch!

I had dinner with the dancers at a hosted table.  I really just picked at my food because it’s impossible to eat a lot after a lunch like we had.  It’s a good thing I’ve been walking a lot to burn at least some of it off.  There was a show after dinner by a song-writing duo and of course after that it was time to go to the club for a little while for dancing.  So that was my day, not very exciting but fun nevertheless.

Oh, I forgot.  There was a five-masted sailing ship anchored near us. The other couple at my dinner table told me it was called the Royal Clipper and it's the largest sailing ship in the world.  They apparently have sailed on it.