St. Lucia SPOT
20 October 2017 | St Lucia
Capn Andy/85 degree Tradewinds
Early morning flight from Jacksonville to Miami with a 2 hour layover for breakfast, then a flight to St. Lucia to join the yacht, a Beneteau 50, not sure which specific model yet. They are all about the same, the ex-charter 50‘s, the Oceanis 50 and Beneteau 50. The charter boats have 4 double staterooms with private heads with additional accommodations in the forepeak. 4 or 5 heads. This particular boat is said to have a bow thruster and electric winches. It is a sloop with a rig a bit bigger than Kaimu’s.
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Our discussion concerns the itinerary, a deadline to be at a port with an airport on the 28th or so, owner to leave the vessel to return stateside on the 29th. The beeline from St. Lucia to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic is 500 miles. Most of the Caribbean from Barbuda to Cuba has been affected by recent hurricane strikes. Puerto Rico is a mess with widespread power outages and food shortages. The Virgins and St. Maarten also in questionable state. Certainly questionable to stop there without some specific news of the condition of facilities. The owner has said he wants to stop at several ports, but one cannot enter Puerto Rico except by one port on each side of the island, North, South, East, and West. My estimate for days at sea between St. Lucia and Punta Cana is 5.83, arrived at by a complicated proprietary formula. This allows one day in port giving us a grand total of 7 days for the passage, and the layover port can be anywhere, Antigua, St. Croix, or ?, not too many options available.
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We are fatigued on our arrival in St. Lucia. The airport is at the south end of the island and Rodney Bay is way up north. A cabbie says it will take 1 1/2 hours to drive up there. We had little sleep the night before and although fellow passengers on the flight down from Miami were zonked out, I stayed awake. The problem was that this was an Airbus, which has a nifty personal entertainment system. I was watching back to back episodes of the crab fishing show, Deadliest Catch. They were recent episodes I had not yet seen and included a full fledged Bering Sea storm with 33 foot seas, crab fishing crews who were working around the clock in that weather to catch their quota of red king crab. How could I sleep when those crews were working around the clock like that.
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The cab ride gave us a good look at the island. The road was generally twisty, turny, uphill, downhill, ears popping, and traffic flying at you from the wrong side of the road. They drive like the English here with not so much of the stiff upper lip, more like an aggressive snarl. Actually the people I’ve met are very courteous, giving, and patient with visitors from the USA who are wound up with schedules to meet and lists of critical items to check before heading out to sea.
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A Moorings representative who is a dockmaster and in charge of over 40 boats showed us around the boat, something he probably has to do two dozen times a week to charter customers before they take a boat out. It is not a complicated boat, no AIS receiver or transmitter, no SSB HF radio, pactor modem, navtex, but it had Raymarine ST70 instruments, autopilot, chartplotter, but it had no solar panels, just a generator to charge the batteries, or run the engine. Twin helms, a bow thruster control, 3 electric winches for the jib sheets and the main, so 4 cockpit winches total, and it of course has a windlass up forward. The galley has a 3 burner propane cooktop and stove, there is a microwave oven, and an essential coffeemaker, and two iceboxes.
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The cockpit has a large bimini and a soft dodger, together they help keep the inclement weather out of the cockpit while giving a 360 degree view and allowing the wind to hit the helmsman, who is the least protected. There are teak inlays in the deck which serve as antiskid.
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This boat is designed to provide accommodation for 4 couples and allow in port entertainment. It is a charter vessel. I’m guessing the sloop rig is aimed at tradewind sailing, much like the Lagoon 380 of last month, only this time we will actually be sailing in the tradewinds.
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Here’s a link to the SPOT tracking page:
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http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0CYzKTn7W2QC6KWbODfZ09mRAQLYuItGb
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The image is the SPOT tracking from before and after the air flight.