Over to St Lucia
Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Fri 5 Apr 2013 22:12
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14:05.32N 60:57.71W
Friday 5 April 2013
Distance Run 83 nm
We cleared out of Customs and Immigration at Port
St Charles having been in Barbados now for three weeks!
The north end of St Lucia is about 96 nautical
miles to the north west which is too far to complete in daylight so an overnight
crossing is necessary. We had lunch on board and decided to get going
a little earlier than planned at 2pm. This would give us a few hours of
daylight before settling in for the night.
Last view from the boat of the basin inside Port St
Charles:-
 Leaving Barbados. You might be able to see a
couple of yacht masts to the right on boats inside the lagoon:-
 The wind was easterly which gave us a fast
course. We expected about a half a knot of current to help us along the
way but in the event it was between 1 and 1.5 knots. This meant we arrived
off St Lucia before daylight so we shaped a longer course around the top of St
Lucia to kill time and arrived in Rodney Bay off the north west coast at dawn,
just before 6am. With the tidal assistance our 96 nm over the ground ended
up being only 83 nm through the water even though we sailed a longer course than
planned.
We dropped anchor in Rodney Bay amongst lots of
other boats and went to sleep for a couple of hours. After tidying
up all the 'string' we came into Rodney Bay Marina just after lunch
and checked in to the marina office. Who should be sitting there but
Morton again. Morton has worked at the Rolnautic chandlery in Gran
Canaria for the last 7 winters and, as one of the few English speakers, was a
popular member of staff. We last saw him a few weeks ago in Mindelo in the
Cape Verde islands.
After lunch we cleared in through Customs and
Immigration and in the evening had dinner in one of the marina
restaurants. At the end of dinner a band set up to play and we stayed
to listen to the really good guitarists and to dance occasionally.
A large family of French people were over
from Martinique on a catamaran celebrating a birthday and we ended up dancing
with them. Lin was particularly taken by the birthday boy,
a native of Martinique, who like many West Indians, apparently 'knew how to
move those hips'. When he pulled Lin over to dance with him she found
the first hand experience didn't disappoint! They then invited us over to their table to share the birthday cake,
an especially nice squidgy chocolate number, so we were both happy.
It was a lovely evening, the dinner was good, the
band was superb and the hospitality of our French neighbours was
wonderful. All the better for being unexpected. We did bail out at
10pm though as they all moved on to Gros Islet, a few miles away, for some
more dancing.
The view across the pontoon to some of the bars and
restaurants in Rodney Bay Marina:-
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