We returned to Oriole after clearing Customs at
Rodney Bay, St Lucia to find
RESTLESS RCC anchored alongside us. We had
been planning to meet up, but
the Restless radio transmitter would not
transmit and so our conversations
had been totally one sided. So although we
had little idea where they were,
they were able to find us! We had a
guided tour of their wonderful new
boat - a strong, powerful and large (50
ft) centreboard ketch now over 20
years old but built originally for a French
professor with the specification
that it could be independant of the land for
three months at a time. Roland
and Consie, who we had met in New Zealand
joined us for supper on Oriole in
somewhat less palacial surroundings, before
continuing on our separate ways
the next day, us south and them
north.
The Restlesses on Oriole for supper
David and Ruth from Newton Ferrers are sailing
for two weeks with some
friends and we have also met up with them and have
sailed loosely in company
from St Lucia to Bequia. It has been great to see
them and to catch up with
home gossip. Yet another friend is abandoned on her
boat in Bequia while her
husband has returned home for some medical
attention. So we are all joining
forces for supper tonight.
Last evening
there was an 80% solar eclipse but sadly and unusually it was
overcast and we
saw precisely nothing! Anyway having consumed three glasses
of Mount
Gay Eclipse rum, (or was it more?), we were eligible for the
tea-shirt.
Earning the Eclipse tea-shirt.
We did a lovely dive today and have planned another for tomorrow and
then we will move gently south through the
Grenadines later in the week,
where we hope and expect to find plenty of
lobsters going cheap in the last
month of the lobster season.
At around 1830 (pitch dark) last Sunday
evening, while at anchor in Rodney Bay, something called John out on deck where
he saw something splashing in the water which turned out to be a girl trying to
find her yacht. She had swum ashore during the afternoon for a walk,
got disorientated and then darkness overtook her so she started swimming around
in search of the yacht on which she was employed as the cook. She had not
appreciated that she was drifting downwind and that we were the last solid
object before she hit Panama. We called up her skipper and reunited her
with the rest of her crew who no doubt were hungry, but did not seem to
appreciate that their hunger might have been more permanent. We hope the
average mate has more between his ears.
It is no joke that things that go adrift in the
Caribbean end up at Panama. Only two weeks ago an open boat on passage
between two islands in the Grenadines made a mobile phone call that they had run
out of fuel. That is the last anyone has seen or heard of them!
