A few pictures of St Lucia

I am certainly making the most of this free wi fi.... charging up the computer at the same time with free electricity too! The generator isn't quite fixed yet on the boat so we can't get ac current yet.

Watching dvds eats up the computer's battery power I discovered....... It is dark here at 6pm so we have been entertaining ourselves huddled around this 9" screen in the cockpit. Makes a good little cinema!!

Some photos of St Lucia above. They always come out in reverse chronological order! The last one is the first clear sighting of the island as we approached it from the North I think. I have been trying to take photos of the birds, mostly not successfully but the bird on the mast is actually an osprey! They are apparently rare here too so I felt quite privileged to see one so close.

We are going out to the anchorage tomorrow so I don't know if the wifi will stretch that far. If not, my next post may be a little while.

Rodney Bay, St Lucia

We left Barbados on Thursday lunchtime for an overnight sail here. Conditions were not so good as per normal it seems! The sea was lumpy and it rained but, still, we got here after about 16 hours.

This is rather a nice spot on a marina berth, yacht friendly with free wi fi and lots of things to do and see so we are going to make the most of it while we are here..... until Tuesday. The yankee is being repaired ( sacrificial strip has been sacrificed!) and so we have to wait for that to be done.

Some thoughts on Barbados....... it was mostly rather expensive probably because most touristy things are geared towards the cruise ship passengers who arrive by the ten thousand just about every day it seems. Carlisle Bay is full of bars playing very loud music til all hours and the bay itself awash with day tripper catamarans, speedboats, jetskis etc. There is apparently nowhere else to go on the Island except Port St Charles and possibly a little place called Holetown which we didn't see. Anyway, once we had left, that was it, as it is very hard to get back there under sail!!

Getting ashore and coming back again in the dinghy became a bit of an issue as there is usually a lot of surf on the beach and I didn't manage it once without getting wet!! Thank god for my waterproof bag for all my paraphenalia needed ashore, camera etc.

The insects were a menace especially to me and especially at night...... I need to toughen up a lot still!

A couple of days before we left, a delightful lilac painted traditional fishing boat about 30' ( Veracity from Penzance built in 2004) appeared & anchored nearby, photo below I hope. The owner/builder, Marcus came and said hello and we subsequently had a brilliant evening bbq ashore eating fresh local fish prepared by a Brit gone local, (Dave) together with lots and lots of rum!! After chatting, we found we had several people in common ... the traditional boat world is like that. Marcus and Jess had crossed the Atlantic together from the Cape Verde in just 14 days, quite a feat! They are bound for Dominica soon and then Antigua for the Classics in April. We have agreed to stay in touch.

A story we had been following via the noonsite and "Herb" ended a couple of days ago when we heard that a man sailing alone across the Atlantic and about 150 miles away from us at one point had died at sea, presumably from natural causes, during the crossing. His boat washed up in Trinidad on Thursday. He had called up Herb saying that he felt unwell so any boats nearby were asked to keep a watch. We listened in for a few days and tried to contact him but he didn't respond. There was nothing we could have done in the circumstances but very sad all the same.

Today is Sunday ( I think!!) and we are hoping to find a local bus to take us on an island tour but if we can't find one today, there's always tomorrow....

I have just bought 3 books, one on local trees, one on local birds and one on Caribbean cookery.

I hope I can now put names to some flora and fauna and some experimental meals then for the future!

Thats all for now except for the photos.........

We’ve been at anchor in Carlisle Bay now for a week and this is the first day without rain!! My mosquito bites are just beginning to disappear but I must remember to use insect repellent every time ashore as there are a lot of other little beasts that bite living around the beach and they seem to love me especially. I’m reliably told that my suffering will stop once I’m a little browner so bring on that sun….!

We have done a couple of the touristy things. Went to Harrison’s Caves the other day. My photos didn’t come out … it was rather dark down there….. interesting though! Friday nights are fish fry nights at the famous Oistins, a few miles along the coast so we went along there too. It was choc a block with tourists and the food was expensive but very good all the same.

For me, doing these things, the best part is the transport because we always choose to go local wherever possible and the buses are something else. They are really cheap at $1.50 (Barbados dollars) which is currently about 50p and you can go any distance for this fare. You get to see all the off the beaten track places en route as they wind their way up and down dead end and frighteningly narrow tracks to drop off or pick up passengers. The other public transport we have been using are the route taxis which have the same $1.50 fare and are basically just mini buses which somehow always manage to cram in around 20 people and have really loud reggae blaring out as they weave and dodge their way through the traffic. Great fun!

Later on today, we are going to the races at the local racetrack which is a dinghy ride, then a short walk away from here at the Garrison Savannah. Some of the horses are exercised here on the beach in the evenings. They seem to enjoy being in the water. Don’t fancy getting on board myself though. They look hard to handle and it’s over 20 years since I last rode!!

We have found a nice beach bar just opposite which does good rum punch and food, flying fish and chips mostly. The tourist hotspots that fill up with cruise passengers every day are much more expensive and are quite a rip off I think. We may try the yacht clubs later as they are both fairly close but the (Royal) Barbados YC has a dress code and it’s not easy getting dressed up, dinghying ashore in the surf (where I always manage to get a soaking) and staying presentable.
I’m writing this blog on the boat and hope to be able to transfer it when I next get to an internet café which may be in a day or so. If I can, there will also be photos but I’ll need help to do this and help may not be at hand!!

We should leave for St Lucia in 5 days or so and will probably do an overnight passage there. I expect the trip will be a little less eventful than the ocean crossing. Everyone we have spoken to has said it was the worst conditions they’d experienced. One chap has been coming across for 30 years so it must have been bad this time!!!

I am going to try to send some photos now but I'm not very good at these things so it may not work. I'm reliably told that St Lucia is much more efficient for everything so I may have to wait til we get there.