St Lucia... sorry for the delay

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St Lucia

Following the completion of the repairs we were keen to escape from Rodney Bay. Lisa and I had met some other families and crews that we had not had the chance to meet prior to departing Las Palmas. Vince, Sally, James and Eddie stepped on board in time for us to sail south to Marigot Bay in the run up to Christmas. Sailing in company with us came Kazaio, Maloo, Chilli Cat and Senta. This made a family filled convoy who were all going to spend Christmas together. Lisa, as always, had booked ahead and found the Rainforest Cafe, which looked to be the best restaurant in town for Christmas eve.

Marigot Bay is a hideaway lagoon sat behind a protective sandbar where the 1960’s Dr Doolittle was filmed. It is said that Nelson was able to hide his fleet within the lagoon and evade detection from the French, whilst skirmishing in the Caribbean. You can berth both inside the sandbar or outside. Without air conditioning the clever money is outside where the breeze pushes through the boat while we are anchored and keeps the mosquitoes at bay. Inside the sill lagoon we are ripe for the picking and readily bitten. Even in the restaurants among the Bombay spice and canapés there are sprays and roll-ons to keep the bugs down.

In the meantime James perfected launching himself from the top of Fabiola’s steps into the water – much to the consternation of Sally and the encouragement of Vince. Equipped with his suicide bombers’ (life) vest he quickly grew in confidence. Eddie on the other hand was still acclimatising to the change of surroundings and was finding it a little tough to last through the night without a feed. It reminded Lisa and I of sailing in Croatia when Cameron was 6 months old. I think everyone was very glad when we upped anchor and left – no such rest for the nativity inhabitants of Marigot Bay – we were there for the duration!

Sally and Vince stayed with us until Christmas Eve when they moved into their hotel in the south of St Lucia. By this stage most of the ARC family boats had arrived in St Lucia to include Miss Amores and Sirius making it a really international mix. We had dinner at the Rainforest Hideaway that night, which made a lovely setting it unfortunately resulted in a number of cases of D&V for those who had the crab or fish – which was most unfortunate. The bout of illness was pretty short-lived for most so the Christmas barbeque was set to go ahead. The morning started with a modest delivery from Santa, which needed opening and mulled wine with the Mr and Mrs Maloo (Mark and Karline) and Nathan from Senta. Charles and I then built a fire-trench on the beach, filled with charcoal and all the Mums brought their Christmas wares ashore to put together. It was a bizarre and alternative Christmas meal, particularly with Senta’s iPod speaker pumping out Christmas carols on a Caribbean beach!

The boys played football on the beach and swung into the sea on a rope-swing hanging from a coconut tree which I then decided to climb – going up was absolutely no problem, using my bottom filed rope technique which would have made the imperial PT staff at Lympstone proud, but the descent was less dignified – no combat boots on ensured that no skin was left on the top of my foot – DOH! Similarly Gonzalo (whose ego also wrote cheques his body could not cash!) took the end of his toe off playing football by catching his toe on a sharp rock! We are not as young as we think we are!

On Boxing Day morning we went south to Les Deux Pitons, two enormous volcanic peaks that rise above the suitably French-named “Soufriere”, so named after the sulphur springs that are located there. With a faint whiff of eggs the town is not a pretty place. The locals vie for passing trade from yachtsmen to fix them to buoys, take lines ashore for them and attempt to sell bread, mangos, take rubbish ashore and all manner of other services. There is a sense of hostility between black and white here, which is not visible (to date) in the other islands, and this does little to make it an enjoyable stay. Despite this we tether to Chilli Cat below Petit Piton and find excellent snorkelling spots with all manner of tropical fish to be seen. We also decide to take an excursion to the sulphur springs with the gang from Kazaio.

Gonzalo and Karina, Rocia and Kenza are a truly European family. Gonzalo is Spanish, Karina is French-Algerian. They met in the USA, lived in Switzerland and now are taking their catamaran around the world. The languages spoken on board depend upon who is conversing with who – so French, Spanish and English – it is pretty humbling. Also aboard is Tito, Gonzalo’s father, and Aqua (a fox terrier). Aqua was chosen against Karina’s better judgement by Gonzalo to provide their security – he is now as soft as butter and presents absolutely no threat to any intruder as he has no limit on comfy spots aboard a big cat where he can sleep and have his tummy rubbed. He is a tri-lingual dog (Spanish, French and English) and seemingly is taken by Gonzalo to other people’s boats to relive himself. No one likes a plastic seat on their toilet as the sensation of wood is so much more comfortable – no different for a dog it seems – who much prefers teak decks to non-slip plastic! His party trick is to take a pee in someone else’s dinghy! The two girls are delicious with thick curly hair and both naughty and beguiling in equal measure. Rocia speaks French to her mother and a little Spanish too. When tickled or having fun she curls up her hand and says “mase, mase...” Spanish for “more, more...” It is a word that has been taken into our usage when the genoa needs to be taken in a little and many other uses.

We are seeing more and more catamarans among cruising families. They make sense in many ways. They have so much more space than a monohull and are literally an apartment with a view that changes every day. Purists would say that they are not as enjoyable to sail – and I think I would probably fall into that camp but there is no doubting that they are quick and well suited to Caribbean life which involves reaching along the line of islands or going down wind. The loads on the sails are much lower than a monohull as they need far less sail to send their two hulls skimming along the surface whereas we need to literally “push” a lot more water out of the way. Upwind we trounce them, as windward work is their Achilles heel but how comfortable or often do we like to go hard on the wind. There are others that say that the cat is not a good sea-boat in heavy weather – I think that this is less true now when much of the time the weather forecasting and routing means that sailors should seldom be caught out in storm conditions and if they are forecast, even mid-Atlantic, there is always time to run away from them. I remain a monohull man until such time as they can design an attractive / classic catamaran to rival the lines of a sleek monohull but it becomes ever harder to stop Lisa’s envious glances of a boat that has a galley that is stable, space for a washing machine, many fridges and freezers and the ability to look out from all angles though large windows as opposed to receiving light from above (as on Fabiola) with no view.

The sulphur springs are fascinating. The faint whiff has become a pungent stink of rotten eggs. We walk around the bubbling black springs with our guide and once the Americans arrive on mass we leave the stench (reader to decide where that comes from) and head for the mud baths to coat ourselves (although our driver shows an additional skill which UK taxi drivers seem not to have as he selflessly coats bikini-clad wives in sulphurous, black mud. Bizarrely he does not offer this service to Gonzalo or I – confining his labours to the voluptuous Lisa and former-lingerie model Karina! After having been thoroughly felt up and violated we head down to the Diamond tropical gardens and waterfalls to rinse off the black mud. Warm water, superheated by the thermal springs cascades down rock fissures and wash off all the “hard to reach” places. Again the tattooed American hordes arrive and we bail for lunch at the hilltop restaurant called Ladera; sat square between the two Pitons and overlooking the bay below. It is an amazing spot with fabulous views for a late lunch and swim (in torrential rain).

Eventually we returned to the boat having got to see a little of Saint Lucia’s interior and prepared to head south to Bequia to spend the New Year with the Blues, amongst others. The next morning Chilli Cat and Fabiola set off for Bequia, while Kazaio had to head north, back to Rodney Bay to get Aqua signed off by the vet. We blasted along with a wonderfully quick reach with pretty big seas running. Thinking that we were doing well we failed to escape the Swedish Swan 90-something that was coming up fast astern. We thought that 9s and 10s were pretty good speeds but she must have been doing at least 14 to 16 knots as the gap closed it became abundantly clear that she was both much bigger and mush quicker than we were.

Trailing our lure we had a hit just as we were clearing the tip of Saint Vincent but as the rod bent double at the strength of the bite and the reel whined out over a hundred metres in seconds the line went from huge pressure to none as whatever we had caught escaped. Thinking that we had probably lost the lure I pulled in the line and watched with morbid fascination as a shark tracked the lure back to the boat. He pulled away about 40 feet from the boat but that was not the last shark that we were to see that day as Lisa spotted a large brown predator scudding by in the opposite direction about 50 feet from the boat. We later asked at the turtle sanctuary which breeds of sharks they have in these waters to be told that there were plentiful bull, lemon and tiger sharks! I suspect that we saw a lemon shark but with the concentration of turtles in Bequia we could not be sure as their main threat is the tiger shark that comes up fast from below the turtle as it is returning to the surface for air.

On both the way south and returning north after Grenada we bypassed Saint Vincent – which was a shame given that it is very green and there are at least two good anchorages for an overnight stop in Wallilabou and Cumberland Bays (in fact the latter is in the top ten anchorages in the Caribbean, as rated by Yachting Monthly). The difficulty for cruising boats is that seldom does anyone say anything good about the security situation in Saint Vincent. It is plagued by stories of violent crime and yachts being visited in the night by intruders. That is enough to keep us away but bearing in mind that this rumour or reputation has not changed in at least 20 years which means that Saint Vincent misses out on quite a large slice of the tourism pie.

After about 50 miles we pulled into Admiralty Bay on Bequia. The anchorage was very busy as New Years Eve fireworks and celebrations are synonymous with Bequia. Nonetheless there are sufficient moorings and space to anchor for a huge number of boats.

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