Hello to all you dedicated blog readers, apologies for the delay in your latest ‘fix’!

I’d like to say it’s because we’ve been so busy but we do seem to have spent a lot of time sleeping. The ‘party animals’ are in bed before Dougie and Bev.

By the way in case people don’t know we are friends of Sarah’s from uni, we used to race West Highland Week in Smokey Bear, and despite having spent this quality time with us Dougie and Bev still agreed to put us up for 2 weeks. And as much as she’s not as ‘cosy’ as the Bear, Swiftwing certainly is more luxurious!

Anyway, here we are! Having met up at Scuttlebutts at Rodney Bay Marina we spent 4 nights on St Lucia. The first 2 nights were at the marina enjoying the luxuries of a swimming pool and shower block, nearby ice cream shop and ‘Tescos’ just a short ‘car’ journey away. Just minutes after arriving we were caught by a very entertaining man called Jambo, who sold us all hats made from palm leaves. 2 days later he was holding classes at the edge of the water teaching Heather and I how to make humming birds out of palm fronds (photos to follow). Heather was proposed to by a local who wanted to come to Scotland, she informed him that he didn’t need a wife to come to Scotland just a passport! The next day having filled the boat with as much food as she would hold we headed out to Pigeon Island. This used to be an island but is now attached to the rest of St Lucia by land reclaimed from the sea or more correctly by a Sandals resort! Once out at Pigeon Island we spent the afternoon in the water scraping weed and beasties off the hull-apparently she’s going much faster now! Much as the facilities of the marina were great it’s lovely to be out at anchor now and away from things.

The following day we headed down the coast to Soufriere, we managed to hit 8.5 knots-John says it’s amazing how quickly everyone becomes fixated with the day’s top speed! Incidentally despite having been kicked out of the forepeak and up on deck, John is taking his role as escort and tour guide very seriously!!! At Soufriere we headed up to Zaka’s mask shop and then enjoyed some snorkelling around the boat. Elissa is teaching us all to dive off the boat, John’s belly-flop was quite spectacular! There were so many beautiful coloured fish and interesting seaweeds when we were snorkelling, it was amazing. The south end of the island is so different to the north, much more rainforest, more unspoilt and you can smell the sulphur from the springs as soon as you enter the bay.

Yesterday we set off on what will be our longest journey of the holiday from St Lucia to St Vincent, we were a bit short of wind to begin with but before long we were racing along at 7 knots-all down to our hull cleaning I reckon! First views of St Vincent were mainly of Cannabis plantations, although Bev says there’s far fewer of the growers huts than last time, we later found out they had been bombed by the Americans recently so this may be the reason. They periodically bomb the cannabis plantations in order to prevent them having produce to sell to the states. On arrival at Wallilabou we were accosted again by boat men offered to pass us a mooring/tie the boat up/sell us jewellery or t-shirts or fruit/take us on a tour!! It’s amazing that the trade from us and other boats can be the only money they earn all day. A very entertaining young lad called Frankie spread all his jewellery out on deck for us to have a look at, we bargained 3 necklaces and a bracelet to 50 EC, that boy could sell snow to the Eskimos! He also offered us Pirates of the Caribbean t-shirts we asked were the ones worn by Johnny Depp-unfortunately not but I think he was seconds away from giving us the shirt off his back suggesting Johnny had worn it!! We were then taken on a tour of the left over film set and up to a waterfall by a real life St Vincent celebrity, well a guy called Alex who was a fisherman extra in the film. Loads of the film set has been left in and around the bay-most of it is fibreglass. Heather entertained herself going round examining all the architecture to see if it was real or not. After the film set Alex took us up the road pointing out all the loads fruit trees and vegetable plant to a waterfall which we all got battered by the force of but it was very refreshing. We were encouraging some young boys to jump from a ledge 10ft above the pool until we realised the water was only waist deep. One of the boys then pulled a bike out of the pool and offered Helen a ‘taxi’!

Now on our way to Bequia, so will report again once we a few more tales under our belts.

Kat (Helen, Heather and Elissa) and the usual suspects!