St Lucia

Greetings from St Lucia! It’s good to be speaking English again on shore.

We left St Pierre in Martinique on 13th Jan. We anchored for lunch in a small bay just north of the fishing village of Case Pilote. After lunch we continued to the small town of Schoelcher, near the capital of Fort de France. The snorkelling was quite good with various fish, sponges, brain coral and underwater plants. Jeremy accidentally touched a black, spiny sea urchin but seems to have extracted all the spines from his finger. There were many squalls and heavy rain throughout the night so we had plenty of washing water in the dinghy but what we really wanted was drinking water. Amazingly, the dinghy pier at Schoelcher had a tap and we were able to make several trips to it with our containers and fill up the boats’ tanks and plenty of 5litre bottles. Unfortunately, Jeremy’s sun glasses dropped into the sea by the pier. He made sure he had a snorkelling mask on our return and on the 15th dive, he found the sunglasses in the cloudy water under the pier! I would have given up long before. Jeremy did lots of washing with our glut of water so it was well after lunch when we set off for Anse Mitan across Fort de France bay, where we could clear out with customs at the marina there. Well that was what our pilot book said, so imagine our surprise on arrival at Anse Mitan to find the marina and the fuel berth had been washed away in a storm!

The next day we had to go back across the bay to Fort de France and clear out at a chandlers. We took the opportunity to shop at a large supermarket and we were able to send the last blog and check our e-mails. We weighed anchor again and went to Great Anse D’Arlet, where a huge, tall ship was anchored and lots of other yachts. Here we spent our remaining euros on a rare meal out in a delightful beach restaurant looking out to the three lighted masts of the tall ship. The food was Creole in style. I had smoked (quite black in fact) chicken and Jeremy had grilled (partly burned) lobster which might have been walking about in their lobster tank just a few minutes before!

It was a shock to us both when the alarm clock went off at 5.00 the next morning, and Jeremy didn’t feel very well as we found ourselves in the Atlantic swell again for the thirty miles to St Lucia. We spent 5 nights in Rodney Bay, 4 of them on anchor off Pigeon Island, which is now a national park, but once was a British fortress from where the Brits bombarded the French if they dared cross the water from Martinique. On our second day, we explored the park for three hours ending up in a ramshackle, arty beach bar where we sampled the local beer named after St Lucia’s famous landmarks, the Pitons. Jeremy spent a large part of our first day in our wardrobe! No he hasn’t lost his marbles, he had to take out the engine control panel, which you will have already guessed, is located just above our wardrobe, and reseal the panel as there had been a huge ingress of water during the night when monsoon type rain hammered on the roof. The same heavy rain found a way into our cabin and soaked Jeremy’s side of the bed. My job was to collect water from the dinghy (ten gallons) and wash the seat covers from the saloon. Everything dried once the sun came out.

We are trying to get into the habit of tipping for services as this is the custom here. We also have to get used to boat vendors who come along and want to sell you fruit, baskets, take you on a trip etc. etc. Most are polite but some are pushy and others are cheeky, like the two guys last night who had nothing to sell but wanted us to give them something. I suspected they were after drugs but they had to settle for 2 digestive biscuits each! We felt unsafe on anchor in Castries (capital) harbour where we were the only yacht staying overnight. We moved to an anchorage near some charter boats, where the shore was patrolled by dogs but we got out at first light as the cruise ships were coming in. You have to padlock your dinghy to the shore if you leave the boat and padlock it to your boat at night.

At present we are in a beautiful little bay called Marigot Bay. There are lots of other yachts, many for charter and a fair number of boat vendors. It was here that Jeremy discovered a leak in the hot water tank and had to spend most of the day sitting in the cockpit locker cutting off chunks of insulation jacket, finding holes and soldering them. He’s done a great job but the tank will have to be replaced soon. It is 34 years old. Between maintenance and repair jobs we have managed to go snorkelling or swimming. Tomorrow we’ll be passing through the most beautiful part of St Lucia, Soufriere Bay and the Pitons. You’re not allowed to anchor in daylight hours anymore so we’ll take photographs as we sail past and make our way to Vieux Fort before crossing the channel to St Vincent, where Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed.