Nevis

Nevis	Nevis	Yellow Tube Sponge	Coral off St. Kitts
Coral off St. Kitts	Coral off St. Kitts	Coral off St. Kitts	Snorkeling off St. Kitts
Lizardfish (?)	Snorkeling off St. Kitts	Snorkeling off St. Kitts	Turtle
Barracuda	Pufferfish	Lobster

Our first anchorage in Nevis was near the capital, Charlestown. Of course my first order of business when visiting this island is a stop at their Philatelic Bureau. Nevis still continues to produce beautiful stamps and souvenir sheets, so I bought my share of souvenir sheets depicting Caribbean flowers, plants, fish, coral, and animals. Since this was our fourth trip to the island, I now have quite a collection of Nevis stamps. In early afternoon, the Mandalay changed its anchorage location down the coast near the Four Seasons resort. So Beth spent the afternoon on Phinney's Beach and I took a guided snorkeling tour that took us across the channel to 2 snorkel sites off of St. Kitts. The first site did not have many fish, but there were lots of unusual coral. The second site had many more fish, and the highlights were seeing a turtle and a fairly large barracuda. Our snorkeling guide also temporarily captured a lobster and a pufferfish, allowing us to take their photographs. It really amazed me to see how fast the lobster could swim (escape) once it was released.

Unfortunately, one of the crew members of the Mandalay, the boson's mate name Pope, had a terrible accident while we were at Nevis. His hand got caught in some sail ropes that were being wound onto a wench. He crushed and severed three fingers and completely lost the tip of one of the fingers. Luckily another crew member was close to the on/off switch of the wench and was able to turn it off before even more serious damage was done. Pope was taken to the Nevis hospital, but they determined he would need to be flown to Trinidad where they had a microvascular surgeon that could attempt to save his fingers. We did get a report before the end of our cruise... he had the surgery and they had hopes that they were able to save his fingers. He had been a Windjammer crew member for 13 years, so he had handled and used that wench many times.