After arriving in St Lucia and getting settled in our anchorage, we visited Pigeon Island, which was situated, on the north end of Rodney Bay.  An interesting place which was full of history demonstrating how ingenious the British had been in protecting their valuable anchorage from the French and Spanish.  
 An additional crew member, Alex, joined us in St Lucia and Ben and Sam hired a car to show him around.  We think there was a hidden agenda as they had heard of a great beach for kite surfing on the other side of the island!
We had been  enrolled in the World Arc which a round the world rally for cruising yachts, for several months.  The start was scheduled in Rodney Bay, St Lucia on

 9 January 2016.  Five days before the start we moved into the marina to provision and make final arrangements. We registered with the organisers and met some of the other crews on the trip.  Then it really started getting busy!  There were meetings most days discussing such things as procedures, communications, provisioning and weather.  There was also a stringent safety chek carried out on all participating boats, of which there were 32 of all nationalities.  Brian had found a chandlery which was really good as he was able to buy most of the last minute things we needed for the boat including new membranes for the water-maker. We also made many trips to the local supermarkets, provisioning for our first leg to Columbia.   There were some trips arranged by the organisers (hereafter referred to as the WARC) .  Claudine, Ben and Sam went on a zip-wire through a local rain forest….super time had by all.  Brian did not go as he had some last minute paperwork that needed doing!!
The boys met some new friends and we subsequently met their parents who were also on the World Arc.  We did our first entertaining - a meal on the boat, which was great fun.  We attended a departure party with all the World Arc crews, some 150 people from the 32 boats.  Only about 8, including Wishanger II, are doing the full circumnavigation as many have decided to stop in Australia and maybe continue the folowing year. Replacing the watermaker membraes proved far more dificult than expected and true to form, we were still fixing it right up to the start!  Ben did a great job and finished just in time!  It was really exciting to see all the boats on the start line and then we were off…. our world adventure had at last started, next stop Santa Marta, Columbia.