Our first day in St Lucia was marked as a day of recuperating: both from accumulated fatigue, and self-inflicted migraine (should have remembered that the local rhum punch is more potent than you think!). Add to this mix, sweltering temperature and 90% humidity, and it will take another 2-3 days to sum up the energy to start tidying up the boat and explore the area. It is lucky that we are the first family boat to have arrived, and the other children (and their parents) are not due for another 3 days, leaving us enough time to recover (The kids of course beg to differ, and are growing impatient every day: "this is boring! No one is here yet, why did we rush to arrive when there is nothing organised?" I threaten them to go back out to sea for another few days so they can wait for their friends there, they eventually settle when they find the swimming pool)

In the meantime, we have been loaded with tourism information about the island, and are having great discussions with Marc and Anne on what to do while in St Lucia: ziplining, skegway, horse riding, hiking, snorkelling, jump up...I can see our activities budget running out in the first week, so make a deal with them: there will be one "fun" activity (read expensive) for every island we visit, promise! And secretly, I pray for the other families to arrive FAST.

By the end of the week, all the families are in, conveniently assigned by the ARC to one common pontoon, so all the kids can get together from dawn to dusk. Not surprisingly, our boat ends up being the meeting point and we regularly have 10 of them on board catching up with Xbox and Wii games they started playing back in Las Palmas. Terry and I do our own catch up with some of the parents as well as other crew we befriended in Las Palmas, so you could say life is back to normal!

The atmosphere here in St Lucia is somewhat different to Las Palmas. Starting with the ARC organisation, which is more focused on the welcoming of every boat, rather than organising daily parties. Over 10 days, there are 4 major parties scheduled, and an entertainment program set up on the marina boardwalk by local businesses open to ARC participants and locals as well. It's all very informal, which is a good thing since we all feel a bit wary after the crossing and prefer to socialise more "privately" with crew we know rather than join hundreds of people and queue for drinks and nibbles (even if they're free). So unlike Las Palmas, where most people were getting to know each other, Rodney Bay Marina feels more like a reunion venue where small groups organise their own mini -events. We're no different and spend our time either entertaining on board ( perfect boat for hosting a cocktail party for 7 families!), or on other people's (thank you to Ensemble for a great dinner party, and a special mention for Phaedo whose owner and crew have become the kids absolute favourites!).

We did venture outside the marina with other ARC families from Delphini, Guma, and Iod'l , travelling to Dennery, on St Lucia's east side, to attend a Seafood Fiesta. Otherwise known as Jump Up, these festivities are organised every week end by villages all over the islands, and consist of several stalls selling street food and drinks to locals and tourists alike, to the sound of very loud caribean music. In most cases, the main street will be closed to traffic, allowing the place to become a giant street party. Some villages are more touristy than others, organising pick up and drop off from some of the resorts, Dennery is a small fishing village just getting onto the Jump Up scene. They offered free transport (just as well, since it took 45 minutes each way driving across the island in the dark!), the grand tour of the catholic church prior to taking us to the stalls on the beachfront.The food on offer was essentially seafood: grilled snapper, lobsters, BBQ fish guts ( a local delicacy), conch soup, turtle stew ( we passed) and wilks (like giant cockles, very sandy tasting). All was washed down by beer or potent rhum punches, and entertainment was provided by the local snake charmer ( a hit with the kids), and many other villagers high on rhum or other spirits. Indeed spirits are what fuels these evenings, and the advice is to go there early and leave early before the party degenerates in a drunken brawl. On cue, we were whisked away by our driver who delivered us back home around 9.30pm. While I would not rank it as a gourmet experience to be repeated, it certainly was a lot of fun, rustic atmosphere, very different from the resort style evenings in Rodney Bay.

Other activities scheduled by the VOAHANGY kids club included snorkelling around Pigeon Island headland, beach party and Pig in a Bun lunch on Reduit beach, boat party (Marc invited all the kids " on his boat" when the adults were ashore at the marina manager's party!) and ziplining at Rainforest Sky Rides. The latter involved gliding 30 meters high between rainforest trees, hooked to double cables and going from platforms to platforms some 60 meters apart. We all had a lot of fun, screaming and laughing, pretending to be monkeys, some of us facing our fears of height. Marc is now asking what's next, bungee jumping?

The highlight of the ARC program was to be the prize giving ceremony on December 17th. This is the reason why we spent so much time in Rodney Bay, and after 10 days of comparing each other's performance the excitement was building up among the crew. We thought we had a chance as the first family boat, maybe in the top 3 of the multihulls after corrected time, Marc even reckoned he caught the biggest fish. We all dressed in our VOAHANGY crew shirt for the occasion (you never know, we may be on stage), and crossed our fingers. When the results were announced, we found that we were beaten by a whisker in many categories: biggest fish, first family boat, 4th ranking in the multihull category. Even though we knew the definite outcome would not be known until the last night, I'd lie if I said we were not disappointed, and explaining to the kids the difference between corrected time (with handicap) and elapsed time (actually time to cross the finishing line) was no easy task. As well as line honours and division prizes the ARC has a multitude of "fun" prizes such as the youngest skipper, oldest skipper, youngest crew member, most beautiful boat, best blog, most visited blog, etc...so it was a fun night still and we cheered on our friends who did get acknowledged (PHAEDO and their most beautiful boat, GUMA for matching their serial number with their ranking number, FRI FLYT for line honours in their division, BLUE OCEAN finishing first in Multihulls, well done guys!)

And so as the ARC ends, we look back and realise we got out of it everything we wanted: we made new friends, the kids had great company all along, clearing in and out was easy as all the logistics issues where taken care of. However the sheer number of participants was sometimes daunting: while the seminars and inspections were well organised, the parties turned into a free for all "let me get to the bar first" affairs where over 500 people rush for canapés and free drinks, we lost Anne many times as she was following trays of chicken wings trying to get a share of the action! I have the feeling that most participants were on their best behaviour in Las Palmas (after all, you never knew whose help you may need during the crossing) then let their hair down in St Lucia believing they didn't need to impress anyone anymore. Don't get me wrong, most participants were delightful, but a few were down right rude. Realistically though, with that many people attending, I am not sure you could blame the organisers for the bad behaviour of some of the participants, so let's say that the ARC has fallen victim of its own success.

NEWSFLASH! We received communication from the ARC on December 18th, that after recalculating the results , we were placed 4th in the Multihull division. So we were right after all. Mixed feelings now: we're delighted to find we performed as well as we thought, disappointed we didn't get to step on stage and share the excitement with our friends. As Marc and Anne say, we could have been famous if only for 5 minutes!! Maybe next time.