The next day, Rodney Bay (well, you try rhyming with St Lucia!)

Adonde
Neil & Tracy Batcheler
Fri 25 May 2007 21:42

Position 14:04.53N 60:57.0W

 

Back to St Lucia. Pretty pleased to be away from Fort De France, a reasonable sail to windward arriving in Rodney Bay. We stopped here, unofficially for one night, on the way north but this time decided to stick around for a few days. There’s a marina here so after one night at anchor in the lagoon we moved onto a berth and enjoyed the sheer luxury of running water and electricity for the first time since Trinidad, nearly three months ago. Ah, bliss. Actually, despite our initial impressions that it wasn’t very nice the place grew on us. There’re hardly any boats around now, most having fled south before the hurricane season starts (don’t worry, we’re doing the same!) so the marina’s not very busy and as a consequence it’s cheap. Splendid. We had two nights in the marina, making the most of draft beer and WiFi as well as the water and power, and as I write this we’re anchored outside ready for an early start (5.00am) for the trip to Bequia. The Malarkeys left a couple of days ago, turning their noses up at water and electricity, but I suppose you can when you’ve got an inboard generator and a watermaker…they should be in Bequia by now.

 

We’ve been struggling a bit with the sailing of late, because as it gets later in the season the wind tends to blow more from the southeast rather than the east / northeast you get in the earlier months, and since we’re heading south it means we’re bashing into it more than we’d like. From here on in, though, the island chain tends to curve towards the west so we should have a better angle on the wind. Ah, theory’s a wonderful thing, I wonder if it works...!