14:04N 060:56W Rodney Bay, St Lucia

Wind Charger
Bob and Elizabeth Frearson
Tue 29 May 2012 00:22
We couldn’t raise a restaurant but by heck we found a corker!  We puttered over to Soufriere and had the usual conversation with boat boy, Tony this time, grabbed a taxi and headed uphill to the Ladera.  We walked in and found ourselves between the Pitons with a fantastic view, even at night.  It was a real wow moment.  The food was excellent, the service supreme, the rum punches hard hitting.  It was a good job they handed out the insect repellent with the amuse bouche because the mossies had definitely decided that it was a great place to dine.  Perfection was somewhat marred by the arrival of a tableful of Americans (New York?  Whiny Accent?) where the bloke kept sniffing in a disgusting way and being true Americans they couldn’t order what was actually on the menu but had to mix and match.
Our taxi driver was called to collect us (Hermus not Biomass as Bob thought) and we had a smooth ride home avoiding the drunk drivers and a smooth ride back to the boat somewhat marred by Tony demanding even more money for “watching” the dinghy (funny that he wasn’t there when we got back).  Why don’t these boys see how off putting that is and how next time you are going to turn down their services?
The next morning we set off in a somewhat lacklustre, end of holiday-ish way and flipped and flopped under motor up the coast towards Rodney Bay.  A brilliantly sunny day, not a breath of wind and the wind that there was was once again pointedly right up our nose.  We arrived, we moored without fuss.  After a quiet evening sharing a pizza we crashed out really early just plain knackered and probably with a dash of sunstroke.
Today has been about putting Windy to bed for the hurricane season and we have scrubbed and bleached and tidied all day.  Ulrich, our stalwart agent here, will be getting Windy out of the water, battened down and organising the list of little jobs while we are gone.  He and his colleagues weren’t too impressed with Bob’s request to install the Adverc engine management system that Bob had carefully hoiked over in his overweight suitcase and, when given the choice, decided that ebay was the best option for Bob’s little gadget.
We are off tomorrow how sad but will be back in December, can’t wait!