We said our final farewells to Carrie and Anne and waved them off in a water taxi in Soufriere. They had been great crew and we had all had a great laugh over the 3 1/2 weeks that they had been with us. I think the highlights had been the music festival and also all the expertise they brought with their scuba diving and snorkeling. Anne's buns were great too! They even rivaled Julia bread making skills (now that's saying something!!)

 

After they had left we headed across the bay to a more comfortable buoy and cleaned up the boat. The next day we headed back to Rodney bay, with the view that we would have a quick pit stop, book the lift out and get a rig check done. All went according to plan until on the Monday the fridge stopped working. Thinking this was all part of it's usual process, I didn't make too much of it until the next day when it still wouldn't work. So we arranged for a refrigeration engineer to come and fix it - going under the dubious name of 'Quickfix'! We therefore had to delay our departure by a day. Wayne (the Quickfix man) did arrive the next morning - but he was a hour late. He sucked his teeth and looked at the fridge and then took off the pump saying he would be back in an hour and a half. 3 1/2 hours later (!!!) he reappeared with it redone. He connected it all  - but it still wouldn't work. So he took it all off again and it went back to the workshop. We had planned to leave that evening - but it was not too be. So we waited for Wayne to reappear. This time on connection, it did work. For those of you who are interested he fitted a big water accumulator to get the moisture out of the system allowing the gas to circulate properly.

Wayne wanted to let it work over night so we ended up waiting another day until we could leave! Eventually, it all worked ok, he was paid and we were able to leave - 2 days behind our schedule. However, in the time, we had managed to book a lift out for the end of Feb, re - seal all the windows which had been leaking, fix the dinghy, and find, book and carry out a rig check with the rigger in Rodney bay.

 

So that evening we anchored in the bay in preparation for an early start the next morning to Bequia. They weather has been inclement in St Lucia and Friday saw us with strong gusty winds and lots of rain squalls. Saturday morning as we left was no exception.

 

I took this about 07.15am as we headed down the St Lucian coast. We passed to the West of St Lucia and then went down the east coast of ST Vincent before heading down the channel between St Vincent and Bequia to arrive in Admiralty Bay on Bequia. It was a reasonable sail  - but again with big rolling seas, particularly towards the end of the trip. We also ended up arriving in Bequia in the dark. This is the third time we had been here so I was more confident with the approach, but even so , it was pitch dark and they don't do navigation lights in a big way here!! We held our breath and fortunately didn't hit anything and anchored in a familiar spot just off Coco's bar.

When we woke this morning, it was a beautiful day. We had left the St Lucian rain behind and are now enjoying the Bequian sunshine!

The view from the anchorage in Bequia.

 

We intend to stay here a couple of days and then move onto Union Island which has so far proved to be a favourite island for the skipper and the crew.

John