February 20th St Lucia We departed around 9:30am to head to Marigot Bay a short passage taking just over an hour. Marigot Bay is a very sheltered mangrove lined bay and is famous as a “hurricane hole” – a good place for boats to take shelter in a hurricane. It’s very pretty with a number of impressive houses set high on the surrounding hills, a few bars and restaurants dotted around and of course a nice sandy beach fringed with swaying palms trees. All in all a very nice sheltered anchorage. We were actually on a mooring which included use of the Hotels pool and gym, which we didn’t take advantage of.
We went in with Mark and Jennifer and had a walk around the few shops. The locals had caught a Sailfish and butchered it on an old wooden block on the waterfront. There was also a guy giving an old gentleman a haircut, using just an old fashioned razor blade. We went to the “Hurricane Hole Bar” for happy hour, 2 for the price of 1 drinks. Not really such a good idea the next morning but it was fun at the time. We sat on the bar stools and watched the two bar tenders do their stuff. The bar tenders were a bit stand offish to start with but we soon had them laughing and joking with us.
We adjourned to the adjoining restaurant for dinner and had a very pleasant dinner.
February 21st we departed at 9.30am and headed up the coast to the famous Rodney Bay. This is where the ARC boats all arrive after their Atlantic Crossing each year and it’s a large lagoon, very protected and has everything you need for boats very close. We decided to come into the marina for a week and catch up on maintenance, cleaning, polishing and waxing the boat.
Dirona, James and Jennifer also arrived today straight from Barbados. There is also a 55 Nordhavn in the marina, a 46 anchored outside near Starlet, and we just missed seeing N47 Moonrise, they left the day before we arrived. Along with Mark and Jennifer we had a very pleasant evening on Dirona catching up on more boat stories.
February 22nd to February 26th We farewelled Mark and Jennifer as they head off to Martinique. We will hopefully catch up with them again when we head up there on the 28th. We had a good game of 500 and Mark and i are the champions. Not much else to report except a lot of hard work, cleaning, polishing, waxing and other maintenance jobs as they crop up. We are pretty much all day every day working nonstop. We have hired a local lad called “Nuts”, his real name is Marvin, for $100 EC a day to help with the polishing and waxing. He is working really well and we will actually pay him more with a bonus at the end. He is 27 and keeps us entertained with some of his stories.
The one time we took time out about 5:30pm to head to the supermarket for some provisions, the duck outboard started playing up and once Robbie put the revs up the prop was just slipping. Sometimes it seems like all we do is maintenance! The next morning Robbie went to the local Yamaha dealer to get a new prop, not as easy as it sounds. 2 weeks for them to order and get one from the States. They gave Robbie a temporary fix, which involves drilling hole in the prop and inserting a pin to hold the prop from slipping. This he did and it works well (so far)
We are having two Brisbane couples over for sundowners tonight on Southern Star. They are both on their yachts in the marina (they dont know each other) and it will be nice to have some Aussie company. We will continue with our cleaning and maintenance until we leave on the 28th to go to the island of Martinique to pick up our friends Paul and Maree which we are excited to see them and also to have a rest from the cleaning!
