St. Lucia
13.49.352N
61.03.897W
At 6:00am this morning, Dale started scurrying around to start the engine to move us forward so our neighbor could retrieve his anchor and leave. This wouldn’t have been so bad except that his wife would raise the anchor 6” at a time to scrub the chain. It ended up taking quite a long time. I told Dale that we were being punished for not being here yesterday.
If you recall, the day we arrived and first dropped our anchor, we had promised to move when they were ready. The next day, I was up and ready to move the boat when they came up but they had changed their minds saying that they were heading north and wouldn‘t leave with the way the winds were blowing. Yesterday when we took our island tour, they said they had wanted to leave and we were no where to be found after 9am. We apologized but this morning, we paid for our transgressions.
At 8 am, Gerry and Dale dinked in to clear us out of customs. Customs wasn’t opened, so they wandered on down and talked with Scott & Heather on Scott Free for a while. About 8:30 they checked again, customs still wasn’t opened, so they wandered over to the local chandlery for a look see. Customs was open when they returned shortly before 9 am. Island time, man! Nothing like it.They made their way back to the boats and we secured the dinks before heading out of the inner anchorage to the outer one. MTNest’s dink wasn’t behind their boat and they didn’t answer when we hailed them on the radio, so we headed out beyond the anchored boats, turned into the wind and unfurled our sails. We turned back out and cut the engines.
Although we were in the lee of St. Lucia, we had a great sail most of the way down to the Pitons. Occasionally, a steep mountain would hinder our air flow but generally it was a brisk ride. Orpailleur, once again left us in their wake. This time I dug out our book on sail trim and started studying. I’d ease the sheets, then pull them back in, ease them back out, so on and so forth until I got frustrated and closed the book, convinced that the sails were exactly as they were when we first started.We finally made contact with MTNest who told us that their watermaker had been repaired but that they wanted to run it for a couple of hours to make sure that everything was working as it should. They didn’t think that they would be able to join us today but would catch up tomorrow.
We had discussed stopping for a quick snorkel at Soufriere but when we arrived, there were no moorings available. As the water dropped to over a 1000’ a few yards beyond the mooring balls, we elected to forego the snorkeling and continue over to the anchorage outside of Jalousie between the Pitons.
With the “assistance” of the local boat boy, we snagged a couple of mooring balls and proceeded to settle in. I wasn’t comfortable with what appeared to be the local spot to take a break around the rocks on the beach and smoke a joint which was very close to our mooring field. We hadn’t heard of any boardings or robberies but I wasn’t crazy about leaving the boat unattended while a few of the locals got high nearby. As it turned out, once it was quitting time at a nearby construction site and all of the workers went home, so did the activity on the shoreline. Maybe it was my imagination but Gerry noticed them too and didn’t seem to be in a great hurry to go snorkeling either.What Gerry did do, was scope out some information about a dinner and show that occurred on Wednesday nights at the restaurant down the beach. What do you know? Today is Wednesday!
Another surprise was MTNest calling us on the radio to say they were rounding the corner and to save them a mooring ball. As luck would have it, one had just become available. Dale and Gerry dinghied over to it and held it long enough for Mike & Terri to grab it.
Mike & Terri decided not to join us this evening, so the crews of Orpailleur and the Palace dinghied to the dock and walked over to a restaurant called Bang. It was previously owned by the English Lord Glenconner but recently purchased by its very close neighbor, the Hilton Resort.Bang had a set dinner menu with 3 selections for the main entrée and the Wednesday night show consisted of local talent. We had acrobat/fire eating brothers and students from a local dance school. We had a great time and even participated in the limbo challenge. Lord Glenconner even showed up for the entertainment after dinner and sat at a table nearby. I guess even though he doesn’t technically own the establishment any more, he’s still very much a part of it.
We knew we had an early morning, so we snuck out a little early to get back to the boats and secure the dink. After doing the limbo, crawling back into a rainy wet dink was easy.
Photo 1: Dale doing the limbo?
Photo 3: Gerry, Dale and a blonde caught in the act!
Photo4: Gerry trying not to fall.
