According to the Caribbean Security Network, St Lucia leads the table for crimes against cruisers.  Only yesterday we heard a cruiser reporting theft of his dinghy during the night.  Someone is going round the bay at night with a pair of wire cutters.  You would think the police would spend a few days with night vision goggles to catch the culprit. 

 

The cruising community is very influenced by the security reports.  There are currently 30 yachts anchored in Rodney Bay, a bay that can house hundreds (there are around 500 yachts anchored in a similar bay in neighbouring Martinique).  It doesn’t help that there is no policing of the jetskis speeding around the yachts, which makes it dangerous to swim off the back of the boat.

 

Enough of the complaining.  The water is pretty clean here and you get some good sunsets behind the “Barrel of Beef” rock at the entrance to the bay.

 

Not only that, but the local inhabitants come and clean your hull for free!  Andrea got this picture of a filefish feasting on our rudder.

 

And you do get some amusement from the other yachts.  We can only think these people were having a lie in and didn’t hear their mainsail slapping against the water.  (They emerged after half an hour to recover the sail.)

 

It has been quite windy recently and some people have been unfortunate with their sails. 

 

For anyone interested in the ongoing saga of repairs, our port engine instruments blanked out as we were anchoring.  The Helm Information Unit has failed and needs to be replaced.

 

The generator boiled when we tried to make water on the way here, which was disappointing because it was one of the few things that seemed to have survived the two year break.  After cleaning intakes, strainers, filters and impellers it still boiled over.  I removed the thermostat for testing, but it opened fine in a mug of boiling water.  So I removed the heat exchanger to find the two years of corrosion heaped up inside it.  Obviously the first couple of runs just served to shift the sediment to the lowest part of the system, the heat exchanger, which was just letting a trickle of water through.  Half an hour with acid inside and it is all sorted and we made water today.  Yay. 

 

The engine room bilge pumps were coming on periodically during our crossing from St Vincent.  I think is the shaft seals leaking because all the sea-life on the propellers was causing them to judder when rotating.  We have cleaned the props and will see if that fixes the leak.