Wednesday 21st March

The Pitons, Soufriere
St. Lucia

13 49.168 N
61 04.056 W

At 08.00 hrs Gerry headed off into immigration to clear us out and buy a few grocery items that I needed. Meanwhile I loaded the blog, did the dishes, made the bed and tied down everything that moves when we are in transit. Once he returned to the boat we stowed the dinghy on the davits and prepared to leave for Soufriere. We hauled in the anchor and motored out of the inner harbour through the narrow channel into the outer bay. Once we had cleared the boats that were anchored in the outer bay we turned into wind and raised our main sail, with the first reef in place. Turing back onto our course we then pulled out the jib, again reefed as we were expecting a fair blow all the way to Soufriere. We turned off the motor and sailed down the coastline towards our destination. It was a pretty quick transit and a thoroughly enjoyable sail. At one point we were “dirty winded by 2 other boats but at the end of the day we arrived in Soufriere before both of them. As we approached Soufriere we were hounded by a couple of boat boys who wanted to help us tie up, we told them we were probably not going to stay. Dale and Lorie motored into the bay to check out moorings at the popular snorkeling spot just inside the harbour entrance, they discovered that there weren’t 2 mooring available so we made an instant decision to continue on to The Pitons and secure a mooring there with the possibility of dinking to the snorkeling spot. The Pitons are twin peaks with a small bay dividing them; it is a very picturesque place with some fabulous buildings on the hillside of the bay. Flanked by the 2 peaks the bay has a number of mooring balls which are looked after by the parks and conservation organization, there is of course a fee for the use of the mooring balls. The extra mile to the Pitons was worth while as we arrived to find plenty of free moorings and a boat boy eager to help us tie up to one. Dale and Lorie tied up first and then we tied up behind them with the help of the boat boy – he’s onto a good thing as he charges $5 to help and it takes about 3 minutes! He offered to take us on tours of the island and we had to tell him that we had done it all the day before; he did manage to get me some bananas, mangoes and tomatoes delivered to the boat, and not too expensive. It was a little rolly in the bay but considering the wind outside we didn’t think it was too bad. By the time we had tied up we decided that it was too windy to dink around and snorkel so we made some water and read the guides for the area. Gerry found an advert for a place called The Bang – a restaurant that had entertainment every Wednesday night. As it was Wednesday we decided to investigate, Gerry took the dink into the dock to make enquiries, it took 2 trips in the end but he booked the 4 of us in for dinner and the show. Meanwhile MT Nest had finally got their water maker problem sorted out and radioed to say they would be joining us in The Pitons mooring field if there was a mooring available. Dale and Gerry scouted one out and sat on the mooring in the dinks until MT Nest arrived and tied up. Mike and Terri didn’t want to go ashore as they were tired so it ended up with just Dale, Lorie, Gerry and I dinking in to The Bang for dinner. The place is called The Bang as it smack bang in between the 2 peaks which make up The Pitons. The Bang, originally built and owned by Lord Glenconner was opened in 1995 by his friend, Princess Margaret with a huge party which apparently made the place famous. The party tradition on Wednesday nights continues and we enjoyed a set meal followed by an evening of entertainment which comprised of acrobats, fire eating, limbo, dancing and music. The fire eaters got the audience to participate by pulling people onto the show floor and getting them to run burning torches over them. I was about the 20th person to be pulled onto the floor and I had to run the torch over the fire eater’s almost bald head, up his arm and along the sole of one foot. Once we had tried our best to burn the fire eaters all the audience participants were made to join a conga line and dance around the place, pulling almost everyone else into the conga line as we went. I was directly behind the fire eater that was leading the conga line and suddenly a limbo pole appeared and we were expected to limbo beneath it – to say the least it was quite a laugh. I did it once, with assistance and then bolted to our table to grab the camera and record Dale, Lorie and Gerry limboing (is that a word?). It was an evening that we wouldn’t have missed for anything, we all had a great time and eventually made our way back to our boats in the dink, as it wasn’t a very bright moonlit night the peaks cast vast shadows over the bay – it was a good job we had our anchor lights on or we may never have found the boat in the dark. I stunk of Kerosene at the end of the night but it was worth it, it made a very nice change to see some live entertainment.

Photo of Gerry limboing from camera of Gypsy Palace

Tuesday 20th March

Rodney Bay
St. Lucia

14 04.435 N
60 56.997 W

Gerry was up early to run the Generator and try to get the freezer temperature down. Once I had surfaced he took off in the dink to see if the propane refill store was open yet – who was he kidding?! Naturally it wasn’t so we were going to have to try and get back from our island tour before the store closed in the evening. During the night a tri-maran just a bit further over from where we are anchored went up in flames around midnight. Lorie had seen it catch fire as she was in their cockpit typing at the time. When Gerry came back to collect me and then Dale and Lorie he detoured over to the boat so that we could have a look at the damage – it was dreadful, on hull was completely burnt out, all the rigging had gone and the rest was pretty charcoaled. Lorie told us that it happened in the short time of just 30 minutes and even though the flames were dowsed it kept re igniting. It was a sorry sight to behold, we thought it was lucky that none of the boats near it caught fire. After detouring to look at it we docked the dinghy and met up with Terri and Mike from MT Nest and went in search of our tour guide. CJ (Chris) was to be our guide for the day, we were doing a trip all around the island hitting the highlights. Mike negotiated the cost down a little and we took off in a very nice, clean, air conditioned 16 seat bus. Chris told us that the fire on the tri-maran was arson, apparently the owner has upset some local people with his building of a new restaurant and they took it out on his boat, as yet the culprits haven’t been caught. Our tour took us Southwards towards the capital of Castries where we saw that a Carnival cruise ship had docked. From this point onwards our tour coincided with the tours being undertaken by the cruise ship passengers so at each stop it was a crush to get the best pictures and we were constantly harassed by souvenir sellers. We stopped at several beautiful viewing spots, taking pictures of the bays that they overlooked – ones which we would possibly be anchoring in over the next day or two. We made our way around the coast via Marigot, Canaries, Anse Chastanet to Soufriere where we visited The Diamond botanical Gardens, baths and waterfall. The place was lovely but I have to say that I didn’t think it was as nice as the botanical gardens in Deshaise or the Emerald Pool in Martinique. Then it was time for lunch which we ate in a small local restaurant, it was very good food and cheap. After lunch we were back in the bus and moving on to the Sulphur Springs which are the result of volcanic action. In 1766 a volcano erupted here, blowing the top off of the mountain and leaving the exposed dish shaped caldera with barren, brightly coloured earth, bubbling pools of hot black liquid and huge spurts of extremely unpleasant smelling steam (it smells like rotten eggs). The volcano is still considered to be an active one even though it has not erupted for the past 200 odd years. It was quite fascinating to see the bubbling pools and steam, apparently the temperature of the pools is high enough to cause second degree burns as one unfortunate tour guides found out when he fell into one of them. After doing the tour of the “walk in volcano” it was back on the bus and a short while later we were climbing out again to view The Pitons from the Ladera Resort. This resort overlooks the forest out to the sea between the two Pitons and is just spectacular. There is a bar and lounge which has views that take your breath away. Apparently the cost of the resort rooms will also take your breath away! The Pitons are two mountains right on the coast which are separated by a bay, they are not the largest mountains on the island but are possibly the most spectacular. After taking our photos of the Pitons we returned to the bus and began to head East and then North along the coast road back towards Rodney Bay. The Eastern side of the island didn’t have so many interesting things to see, the roads were very windy but the scenery was nice and we got some great views of the Atlantic – looking quite revolting, glad we weren’t out there sailing! We made it back to the dock by 17.10hrs, paid Chris for our day out and, after collecting our propane tank, headed straight into the bar at Scuttlebutts for a drink and a light dinner. Once we were all filled to capacity we jumped in the dinks and made our way to our boats. We turned on the generator and then joined Dale, Lorie, Terri and Mike on Gypsy Palace for a nightcap (admittedly an early nightcap but we were tired!). After this it was back to our boat, type up blog notes and check the emails before going to bed

Monday 19th March

Rodney Bay
St. Lucia

14 04.435 N
60 56.997 W

The day dawned and the separation of tasks began. Gerry and Dale took off into town to clear us in; they left early as the office was supposed to open at 08.00hrs. Lorie and I stayed aboard our boats. I spent the time alone doing a multitude of cleaning jobs, polished the woodwork, did the dishes, made the bed and then sat down to type up some blog notes. We had discovered the free internet connection here but it is painfully slow at loading anything so I didn’t get too much done. A couple of boat boys came by selling fruit and vegetables, I didn’t have any money as Gerry had yet to get some out at the ATM so couldn’t restock my fruit basket, still they are around every day so there will be another time. When Gerry returned he told me that the customs office hadn’t opened on time and that by the time it did open there was a rather long queue for clearing in and / or out. Once he got into the office the clearing in was pretty quick. He and Dale had also checked out where to get our propane tank refilled and where we could pick up some fresh water in our jerry can, oh and they had locater the water world chandlery. As soon as he got back Gerry collected our propane tank and water jerry can and returned to the dock to get them filled. The propane tank would need to be left for a day – we could collect it in the morning. The water can was filled immediately after some discussion – the minimum charge for water was $6 for 100 gallons and as our jerry can only holds 5 gallons it would have meant a lot of trips (plus we don’t have 100 gallons in onboard tank capacity anyway!) he ended up paying 30 cents for the 5 gallons – it was hardly worth writing out the paperwork for it! By the time he returned to the boat the second time it almost lunchtime and he had arranged with Dale to go ashore for lunch at the local Roti shop. We took separate dinks into the dock and met up for lunch, a quick browse around the souvenir shops and a longer browse around the Water world chandlery – not that they had anything we needed. We then returned to our boats, Dale and Gerry heading off with tools in hand to see if they could help Mike ( MT Nest) find what was wrong with his water maker. I spent the afternoon mending stuff on the sewing machine – seam that had come undone on clothing and Lorie’s American flag. The guys returned later in the afternoon with the news that they had been unable to solve the problem – it was going to need an expert to find and fix the problem. We agreed to go back ashore for our evening meal and arranged to go together in one dink. Just before 17.00hrs Dale and Lorie came and collected us and off we went. We had heard good reports about a tandoori restaurant a little further around the bay and decided to give the place a try. We jumped in a taxi and after a short ride were deposited outside the Razamataz tandoori restaurant. It was still a little early so we had to sit at the bar and have a drink and as it was happy hour we got 2 for the price of 1. We perused the menu whilst still sober and selected a variety of dishes, by the time we got our first course we were beginning to feel well oiled. The food was delicious, and of course we had ordered enough to feed a small army. We did our best to finish it all but I’m afraid we failed so we couldn’t have any desert. By the time we paid the bill the taxi for our return trip to the marina had arrived so we all pilled into it and were driven back to the dinghy dock. In retrospect we should have walked off some of the dinner as we didn’t sleep that well due to over full tummies. Dale dropped us off at our boat and arranged that we would collect them in the morning for the trip into town where we were going to be going on a tour of the island for the day.