Redemption, Ahhhh, Sweet Redemption
St. Lucia has been redeemed. Rodney Bay is too be avoided at all costs, however, the Pitons are just as majestic as I remember.
We arrived here on Friday after a nice sail down the island. The Pitons are two huge mountains that shoot dramatically out of the water and we are moored right between them. You have to pick up a mooring because it is volcanic therefore deep. The moorings are 20$ for two nights or forty for the week. We have been here three days enjoying ourselves.
There is a four star resort Jalousie Plantation has kept us well entertained. If you are looking for a cool getaway check out their website. We feel very secluded and the real world seems years away.. The resort is being revamped but it is still stunning and first class.
We have been hanging out on beach or by the pool at the resort while the kids play at their 'kids camp' They get all the kids together and do things like an egg toss, sack races etc.. The staff don't seem to mind if Ben and Sam join because the season is slow, the more kids the better. The snorkeling right off the beach is some of the best we have seen thus far. There are also fresh water showers, a fantastic pool or beach set up where they give you a red flag to put up if you need service.... I am in heaven. The prices at the resort are pretty expensive for a cruisers budget, thus I have not had a chance to hoist the flag as much as I would like, but we make sure to spend something everyday to 'earn our keep'. I would have loved to have dinner by candlelight at one of the restaurants....36$ for a chicken entree...hmmm....how about beers and burgers back on Indy and watch people have dinner!
Being here reminds me of our Carmac days. In particular, when we were working on Carmac, Angie(a fellow crew member) and I snuck off the boat and went to the newly opened bar(shocking, yes, I know), Bang Between the Pitons, which was owned by Collin Tenant, THE BEST FRIEND OF PRINCESS ANNE. As Ang and I were having drinks, Collin showed up, sat down at our table, bought us drinks and essentially hit on Angie. I had no idea who he was but Ang filled me in and I was, of course, suddenly impressed with our much older eccentric companion. Seven degrees of separation....... essentially we were having drinks with the Windsor family!
Not to mention the fact that coupled with that, I went for a helicopter ride here(yes, I got to wear the head set with mic).

We went to Souffireire, a town about a fifteen minute dinghy ride around the corner from the Pitons, on Sunday for a few provisions and found the town and people pleasant. We walked through the town without hassle and the prices were very reasonable. However, O has made two other pilgrimages to town and things were not so cool, he was hassled, followed, threatened..'I can watch your dinghy because something VERY BAD could happen to it unless you pay me to watch it' which O did not take kindly too and then threatened them for threatening him.
Anyway, bottom line is the Pitons are one of my favorite places thus far. I found it relaxing, stunningly, breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful. O claims that Piton beer is the best beer he has had thus far. However, we were receiving reports that a tropical storm is brewing down south so we have to leave our little sanctuary for points south. I hope to return there someday..maybe as a guest!
We are currently in Bequia. We arrived yesterday afternoon. The front is upon us and it is raining buckets. Sam is asleep, Ben is painting, O stressing and I am writing. The harbor is quite full which is an unusual site these days. It seems to be mostly French bareboat charters which is a little scary considering we are going to have high winds. No offense but a lot of the bareboat charterers we have encountered CANNOT ANCHOR and tend to drag all over the place. With forty kt winds predicted it should be an interesting......sleepless night.
Our new motto as quoted from Rachael, my sister " I know, I know, welcome to paradise"


Glossary:
Bareboat: a boat that is rented for a week without a captain or crew. The people can rent it without proving their knowledge etc. They also don't care about the boat because it is not theirs...the rental car of boats.

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HELP!!! We are trapped in a cheesy Club Med commercial and we can't get out!!!!!
We are surrounded by monster hotels, wave runners zooming incessantly in circles around the boat and the screams of sunburned 'merrymakers' being pulled around on an inflatable hot dog. YIKES. Where are we??
St. Lucia, Rodney Bay, to be exact.
It is predicted to blow tonight and into tomorrow so we will stay here through the blow and then head, blessedly, for points south.
Ben and I went ashore yesterday and were visually assaulted by the tightly packed, same colored McMansions that line the inside of the pond. It seems they are going 'American style' and building even more...behind or on top of the newly built houses. Someone here may want to have a closer look at what the 'more is better' philosophy did to the American market!
Upon exiting the dinghy we saw Subway, Domino's and Burger King. Don't get me wrong, I am a garbage can with a particular passion for fast, overly processed food, but even I was taken aback by the urbanization. However, I do love the smell of burger king, but that's not the point.
Anyway, cars were zooming by us as we waited in the stinking heat to cross the street. This is not the St. Lucia I remember, I just wanna get out of here...fast. While we wait out the weather, we will resupply milk, juice, beer and soda. Due to the abundance of hotels, things are not all that cheap. I cannot wait to get further south to the 'promised land' of cheap food, drinks and gas....
I was able to find a doctor for Ben, he has a case of impetigo. He contracted it from some of the kids in Antigua and had just finished his last round of antibiotics when another blister appeared on his forehead.
This is my introduction to impetigo, which apparently is quite common with kids. It is highly contagious and difficult to get rid of, as I am finding out. It doesn't bother him at all, and the oozing sores look worse than he assures me they are. It looks a lot like poison ivy. The dr gave us a z pack or erythromicin which should take care of the problem once and for all. Thankfully, Sam has, thus far escaped catching it.
I was on 'earlies' this morning. I woke up at 4:30 because of wind and rain and couldn't get back to sleep. I finished the book I was reading, and decided at 5:30 to get up, make coffee, and have some precious alone time. However, as I was cleaning the coffee pot, Sammy bounded up to his gate to greet me 'a good morning mamma'.....You've gotta be kidding me, I thought to myself. And so my day began.

I am a little unsure what the day will entail. I am thinking of possibly sneaking into one of the hotel pools and then taking the kids for pizza tonight. It has been really nice having this family time again.
The cruising anchorages lately are pretty sparse. Most cruisers are well below the insurance approved hurricane line. The upside being that we have the anchorages to ourselves, the downside being that lots of businesses are closed due to the slow season, which is probably an upside, because then we can't spend our money. However, have faith, we will find other ways to spend the Yankee dollar or Carribean EC!!!


I forgot to mention in the Guadaloupe blog that I had to hoist O up the mast to fix our wind direction thing...anyway, ferries and fisherman kept whizzing by the boat which sent O rocking back and forth 65ft up in the air.....did I mention that he hated the Saintes?????(or that it was my fault that the ferries were running???? ))))

Picture is not of St. Lucia but wanted to post some photos up since I have FINALLY figured out how to post!!! The photo posted is, obviously, of Ben riding..

Carmac crew: this is the place we did the photo shoot for Carmac. You WOULD NEVER RECOGNIZE THIS PLACE NOW!!! It's crazy,..resembles St. Martin minus the french or nudists.

It is also worth mentioning that, many moons ago O and I were here for my birthday,we were on charter and anchored at the Pitons, O had a dozen roses delivered to me via helicopter!!!! What a romantic! either that or he knew he had to do better than the beer stubbie he had given me the year before!!

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We raised anchor around 10:30 for points south.
It was strange being on the move. It was made considerably harder by the fact that we had 22-28kt winds and 11ft seas!! I was totally freaked trying to talk myself calm. Poor Sam, he had a fever to begin with and was throwing up. Ben was out cold. O was psyched because we were doing 10-11kts. Our first trip back out and I was holding a sick child, feeling a little jumpy by the sea state and seriously wondering what the hell I was doing with my life!
However, we arrived at our destination in three and a half hours which is the upside of strong winds in the right direction! Deshaies(day-hay) is a rustic fishing village surrounded by steep lush mountains on three sides. It looks like something you would see in a French movie. We anchored and went ashore to check it out. There are charming little restaurants perched on the shore with hanging wicker lanterns, wonderful fabrics and menus to die for. I wish we had spent a few more days there because it was charming. I also wish the dollar was a bit stronger against the Euro!!!
The next day we had plans to go to the botanical garden in search of a Venus fly trap plant for Ben. However, upon closer reading of the guide book we noticed there is a 11 euro entrance fee per adult so we passed on that and instead decided to hike to the nearby waterfall.
As we were getting out of the dinghy to begin our hike it started to rain and rain and rain and rain......all day long. Not to be deterred, we continued to the waterfall, however, the path ended and you had to navigate across the stones of the stream which were slippery and O was lugging Ben on his shoulders so we decided to turn around and made for the boat TOTALLY drenched. The boat was wet, damp and dreary so after lunch we pulled anchor and decided to head for greener pastures or at least someplace where it was not raining.
We had no luck finding a place without rain. We anchored in Basse Terre which is a terrible anchorage...deep and rolly. The wind was clocking around in all directions which had O on edge all night. The problem with most volcanic island is that the anchorages are really deep unless you hug the shore and still they are 30/35 ft so you have to put out a lot of scope, when the winds are knocking around in all directions due to squalls and mountain ranges it can get a little tricky. Neither of us slept very well that night and were more than happy to pull anchor at five o clock that morning.
We arrived in the Saintes around 10am to a pretty full harbor. Again, the anchorage was deep so we had to chose carefully. After looking for what seemed like hours, we finally dropped the hook and settled in. Our expectations were pretty high as we had heard wonderful things about the Saintes. We were a tad disappointed. First of all, it was shockingly expensive and the waterfront lacked the charm of Deshaie. They had scooter rentals but the island did not intrigue us enough to warrant a rental so we decided to save our money for some rainforest stuff in Dominica. Something about paying 1.80 euro for a baguette was unappealing, five euro for a soda or beer...hmmm, no thanks.
Upon our return to the boat, we discovered that a nasty American catamaran had dropped their anchor on ours and were about forty feet in front of us. However, we didn't say anything and kicked back on the boat.
The next morning we went to town for coffee, chocolate croissants and a walk to the other side of the island. The people on the boat in front of us were not on board so we assumed they must be staying the day as well. They pulled anchor when they got back to their boat and grabbed our anchor as well. When we discovered they had left we hustled back to the boat which had shifted a little. Upon closer inspection we didn't think they had done too much damage so we stayed on board to monitor. That afternoon I was reading the Boxcar Children to Ben, Sam was sleeping and O was doing engine stuff when he shouted 'Lou(he calls me lou) I need you up here NOW!' I raced on deck and was horrified to see we literally side by side with the steel boat next to us. The guy we were touching was on board sitting in his cockpit reading and NEVER even said boo to us as our boats collided. I started pulling the anchor while O tied the dinghy off to the side so we could maneuver. As we were pulling the anchor I noticed our dinghy floating away and was half way across the harbor!! Again, the guy next to us said NOTHING and did not even move!!! I seriously wanted to thump him...give me a break. After the anchor was situated I(always bragging of being the stronger swimmer) had to eat my words and swim for the dinghy which was no easy task. I was seriously gasping and shaking once I got to it.
At this point O could find NO redeeming qualities about the Saints so we moved over to a cute little anchorage around the corner.
We took the kids to the beach which was teaming with sea glass and relaxed. That night around 2:00am we heard someone whistle and say 'excuse me' so we jumped up and found that again, we were side to another boat. O was furious. We had to pull anchor and re drop in the pitch black. We did it but it was stressful considering we had so much out. O woke up very early the next day and dived on our anchor which was solidly set and then dove on the boat that woke us up, both of their anchors had dragged leaving clear indentations along the sand, not to mention they had no scope out and were using two dinghy anchors!. So, they drag, wake us up and expect us to move...typical. Words cannot explain how angry Otis was at that point. Further exacerbated by the fact that the wind started blowing out of the west, which never happens putting us very close to shore. We pulled anchor and went back to town so I could do some 'trench' provisioning. We were leaving bright and early for Dominica.
Once we got to town we discovered our friends on Lady Francesca or 'The Lady' were there. We met them in Antigua, they have two girls the exact same age as Ben and Sam. I swung by to say hello on my way back from 'provisioning'. Their boat is one of the most beautiful boats I have ever seen. Normally they charter it but they have moved on board for a few months. The Lady is a 76ft wooden ketch which had just been stripped, re varnished and repainted in Antigua so she was brand spanking. The interior is all beautiful wood with high ceilings, wonderful cupboards, dining tables, bars, everything you could ever ask for and wonderfully maintained. Upon saying hello they sent me for the rest of the family so we hung out on The Lady for the night which was the first time I had seen O relax since we arrived.
The next morning bright and early we left for Dominica....O was in his element....seven volcanoes, lush green mountains, and abundance of fruit and veg just for the taking......
next update Dominica

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