“13:58N 061:02W”

St Lucia

We were expecting a slowish sail to St Lucia from Dominica and it started out like that. A beautiful moonlit night but no wind, so we motored the majority of the way down the coast.  As we neared the end of the island the wind picked up and we had a decent sail until about half way between Dominica and Martinique when we were hit by a line of squalls.  Expecting the wind to increase we put in a reef in the main and genoa but the wind stayed pretty constant but it rained heavily.  As we came out of the squall line we were in the lee of Martinique and the wind dropped so back to motoring.

The end of Martinique the wind picked up again but we were a bit too far off the coast and were being pushed westwards by the current which meant we had to head up more into the wind which makes for harder sailing.  Eventually the current eased and we had a final good sail into Marigot Bay, St Lucia, arriving at 14.30

We stayed 3 nights in Marigot, had a meal in one of our favourite restaurants – the Rainforest Hideaway.  We also met up with Karen and William who had just returned to their boat after a few weeks back in the UK.  We had met them originally in Lanzarote, and they completed the ARC crossing when we did.  We had spent all this year crossing paths with them so it was nice to have a catch up.  They are also heading south to Grenada so we will see them again.

Sunset from Doolittles bar/restaurant Marigot Bay.