The alarm clock wakes us up early - NOT - and we are soon having our coffee with a light sprinkles of rain as we make our preparations to sail to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia.

Raise the main, hoist the hook and motor through the narrow channel, rocks, reefs, islands and entrance to the Caribbean Sea. Once outside and into the open water it is a challenge to navigate around all of the fishing buoys until we are in deep water. They really are every where and you have to have a good watch or you will be cutting lines out of your props.

The winds are gusting gail force up to 6.5 knots from the WEST (what is that all about - no Trade winds from the East today) and the seas are a treacherous 3' rolling swells as we scream across the water at 4 knots on a close haul reach for our 20 NM crossing (and I do mean scream as I am so bored at this point) About 3 NM out we see a pod ( a whack - South African term) of dolphins that appear to sleeping on top of the water, about 15 or so and they didn't even move (again I had to make a course change to avoid hitting them - pesky sea life!)

Then all of the sudden, PANIC - we lost our GPS fix and the Raymarine is screaming the alarm and we are now officially lost at sea with no fix. Brenda has words with the GPS and sure enough it finds us once again and we are saved - that was a close call - and we were really sweating it (because it is hot, humid and little to no wind!)

With the GPS straitened out, Brenda goes back to work cleaning the inside of the boat, vinegar water bottle in one hand and Lysol in the other. She quickly gets everything wiped down, vacuumed, laundry together, bedding changed and coffee pot cleaned out while I sit around thinking about what to write in the blog. She is working so hard it is making me exhausted - no really!

3 more hours to go and the winds gust up to 8.5 knots (for a split second) and we are cruising at 4.5 knots (for half a split second). With that quickly over I go back to thinking about what to write in the blog, this is reminding me of the week of no wind in the middle of ocean during the crossing of the South Atlantic from Cape Town to Recife. But, I continue to keep a vigilant watch as I may have to avoid hitting another whale or whack of sleeping dolphins!

Finally, we enter Rodney Bay, drop the main sail (I don't even bother turning into the wind as there isn't much wind). we head to the fuel dock to top off the tanks. With that done we tie up to the dock, Brenda's first comment was "Give Me the Hose" and she is off to washing the salt off of the boat so I go check in with Customs, Immigrations, Port Authority (pay the $30.00 EC welcome to St. Lucia fee) and then check in with IGY and pay for our slip for the next 16 days.

The boat is clean, the water tanks are full, the fuel tanks topped with diesel fuel and the A/C is finally cooling me down. The only saving grace right now from the exhausting crossing is the huge plate of ribs I am going to have for dinner at H2O and sleeping with the A/C on tonight.