First mate here. Having just about recovered from the Atlantic crossing it's time to move on, so here's an update on St Lucia. We have now got all the jobs done on the boat, including Pete successfully unblocking the holding tank this morning, big sigh of relief. We have had a very pleasant social time over the past couple of weeks. Our original ARC friends have moved on,apart from Peter and Heidi, but we have made some very good new friends, Debra and Paul from Jayjay, and Stuart and Liz from Finnrose, pictures in the next blog.
 
We have been to Castries, the capital, twice on the bus to try and get a tab computer fixed. The buses are great, !2 seater minibuses that come every couple of minutes and cost about 60p. When you want to get off you say "Bus stop driver". We also went on a taxi tour of the island wih Peter and Heidi. Our driver was Ali, and he took us to several fishing villages, a botanical gardens with great views of the Piton mountains, sulphur mud baths inside a volcano, a waterfall, another gardens where he told us all about the plants, and finishing up at a rum factory where we sampled about 20 rums.It was a great day out.
 
St Lucia is very pleasant, with friendly people, you just have to get used to a slower pace of life. The weather has not been typical while we have been here, we have had very strong winds, grey skies and heavy showers a lot of the time. However today we have blue skies and sun and we will make the most of it by dinghying over to a great little restaurant on the beach at Pigeon Island for lunch with Peter and Heidi. Tomorrow we leave for Martinique, about a five hour trip.
 
The first few pictures are of Roysterer in the Atlantic, taken by Peter on Stormvogel, who were close to us for a short while. All the rest were taken on our taxi tour.
 
 
 
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