St. Lucia

The passage from St. Vincents to St Lucia was varied, with very light wind during the time we were behind the islands to about two hours each of seven plus and then 6.5 knot boat speeds between the islands. The cats found a new cat box, the cubby beneath the helms person's seat, normally stuffed with stuff, but they wormed their way in. The photo also shows a bit of our new cockpit cushions. In Whitty's picture one can see the shift lever turned to reverse_ the best position for sailing because it locks the propeller so its blades feather, showing their narrow edge to the water.

And Alfie has taken to sleeping in the clothes locker above my hip at night, locked into a small space and happy. She lets us know when she wants to leave in the morning.




The Pitons, the nation's symbols, are hidden most of the way south, but heading toward the island from the south they are quite prominent -- on this clear day we saw them from St. Vincents. The smaller and sharper one to the left, Petit Piton, is about 2400 feet high.

Our destination today was the tiny hidden harbor, Marigot, whose entrance is shown in this photo. From further out at sea, if you blink, you will miss it. The British hid their fleet in here once, disguising their spars with palm trees and then sneaked out behind the French and defeated them -- or at least that's what the guidebooks say. It is a popular spot, with a Moorings Charter Company base in it. We had high expectations but found it small, crowded, dirty, noisy, and expensive: our mooring cost $80EC ($32 US). We cleared into customs here with no mention of the fact that we had inadvertently forgotten to check out of St Lucia last spring, and hence faced a "fine". But since the records of innings and outings are not computerized, our risk seemed low. We dined aboard after a bit of shopping and our major activity next morning was a walk to the post office to mail some letters. "Ten minutes up the road" said the man. But it was 45 minutes up a steep hill and down again on the other side, to the P.O., which was a stall in a local food market.  This was our first hike since our arrival here and good practice for more of them in the future, with the bonus of photos from the "lookout" spot at the top where buses unload masses of people from the big cruise ships that come into the big harbor of Castries. This one from half way up shows ILENE, smack dab in the middle

 Here is the entire harbor, from the top.

 
After lunch we motored all the way to Rodney Bay, eight miles away, with about three miles of true wind on our nose. Last winter we spent about four days in the big modern Marina entered through an inlet from the Bay, but this time we anchored out in the Bay. This was the finish line of the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) similar to the Caribbean 1500 but with over 300 boats coming across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands. Day and night we saw boats sailing as fast as they could toward the finish line, a boat on a mooring by its stern with huge flags up by day and an orange flasher by night. As these boats passed, they got a big Toot on the air horn and gave a big yell.
During the first night our anchor dragged and so we moved from the south side of the bay, nearer the marina and wifi, to the north side at night where our anchor held well. The only problem here was what Roger believes is inaccurate information in the electronic charts in our chart plotter. Our eyeball view of the situation had us in the same place that the chart plotter showed us to be, but our very reliable depth meter said we were anchored in 36 feet of water while the chart on the plotter showed depths of only ten feet all around us.
Here we went in to the Marina for Lene to work on the computer while I visited hardware and marine stores, we shopped for groceries at the two big supermarkets, by dink, we had the starboard valve of the dink removed and replaced, we checked out of customs in anticipation of a departure the next day, and we had Allen and Lisbeth of "Life of Reilly" for a drink and dinner. I say "a drink" because gradually, our gin and vodka, which we had used on Wednesday afternoons at the Harlem Yacht Club, had dwindled, and there was just enough for one drink a piece. They lived aboard their boat all summer and are heading north for a planned jump back to England to visit relatives this summer. Dinner was whole wheat pasta bolognese, braised cabbage (alright, it's not the traditional vegetable) and a store brought whole wheat natural bread that we could not place but later learned had molasses in it and was delicious.