13:57.913N 61:1.414W

We’ve moved out of Rodney Bay and are now in a beautiful spot on St Lucia  called Marigot Bay , it is small and well protected with dense mangroves all round with the exception of one side where there is a plush hotel and holiday cottages and a quay for yachts.

There are a few bars and restaurants dotted around the bay but unfortunately all closed at the moment except for Doolittles ( where they filmed the movie Dr Doolittle ) which does a take away service for yachties.

In the middle of the bay there are usually plenty of mooring buoys to tie up to but due to lack of use and maintenance during Covid  they have become unsafe and being serviced at the moment so we are moored up on the quay which really is no hardship.

The Covid situation is still effecting travel between the islands and the bubble which allowed uninterrupted travel between  most of the windward isles except for the French owned now seems to have burst and more restrictions are being applied.

We have heard of people paying US$290 per person for Covid tests before being allowed in certain places so we are going to sit tight and spend the next three or four weeks around St Lucia and see what transpires before we move on.

The good thing from our point of view is that everywhere is relatively quiet with no problems anchoring or picking up moorings .

Last blog I promised to update you on the missing details of the crossing so I thought I would start with a mystery for all you science geeks . For easy access   we placed a lot of our drinks cans , beer , lemonade and tonic in a lidless plastic box right at the bottom of our chest type fridge ( which wasn’t working ) . A couple of days later Janet opened the fridge and noticed that  bowl of Wahoo steeped in Soy , chillie , lemon and Teryaki had fallen over and emptied its contents into the bottom of the fridge. Here’s the weird bit – the marinade had reacted with the aluminium cans and caused small pits to appear on the bottom and all the liquid had drained away – wait for it – the cans were still fully pressurized ! How can all the liquid escape but leave the gas behind ?? When I tried to squeeze the cans to see if there was a leak anywhere they were absolutely solid , just as if they were full cans. This was the case for all 12-18 cans .

Two or three days after we caught the Wahoo Janet looked over the stern to see something totally unexpected – Son of Wahoo was following us . Just two feet behind the boat and about 6 inches below the surface was another large Wahoo which followed us for several hours !

28/12/20

This blog should have been posted ages ago but we are having real trouble with WiFi , mainly because we don’t have access to the bars where free wifi is usually available .

I’ll just keep updating it and get it to you eventually.

Xmas in Marigot bay was great , as we are the only Brits left amongst the band of Arc  members we deferred to others tradition and celebrated on Christmas eve with a lovely meal on Rivercafe with the courses provided by the Anders and Nilla from Ydalir – a herring and potato hash type thing followed by pickled herring in a creamy onion sauce . This was followed by roast turkey and mashed potato courtesy of Holger and Karin from Rivercafe. All very delicious and we then went to the bar to drink copious amounts of rum punch. One slight hiccup here was that our friend Nicklaus recommended we bought a jug of rum punches rather than keep ordering individuals . What he didn’t say was the size of jug to order . He had previously ordered one which held four large glasses which is what we assumed would arrive rather than the Greek urn which arrived holding  15 glasses  . At US$10 per glass it worked out a tad expensive ! Still it was Christmas so no worries.