Saint Lucia
24 February 2012
20 February 2012
Good morning from sunny St. Lucia. I am afraid that as had happened at this time last year, the blog has fallen far behind so this is an attempt to catch up and we will fill the blanks with pictures. Sam left a bit over a week ago ago to visit her family in Vermont. Her mom is not well, but the family has created an incredible support network to manage care, visits and help.
CHAMPLAIN and I are sitting at dock in Rodney Bay St. Lucia. It is a good marina, but I am pretty much boat-bound. There is a fair amount of traffic and craziness here. In the last three days, we have been hit twice by boats pulling into the slip next to us, and once by a boat going by who wasn't paying attention and caught his lifelines on our anchor. We had no damage, but he will have some splainen to do to the charter company when he returns the boat missing a couple of stanchions.
This is only the second extended period CHAMPLAIN has been at a dock this year so catching up on maintenance that cannot be done at anchor has been my priority. All in all they have gone well with most completed smoothly, but consistent with any to-do list, there have been a few that have been extremely frustrating with outcomes less than perfect and will just have to do until more qualified skills can be applied.
The last real communication we sent was as we were leaving for Grenada, February 1st. We had a wild ride almost dead to the wind to Sandy Island at Cariacaou but the next day the winds were more to the east and our trip back to Bequia was 9.5 knots at 55 degrees off the wind and fabulous.
On 8 February, Tom and Cindra flew into Bequia and we began a great trip sailing back down through the Grenadines; Mystique, Union, Tobago Cays, back north to Bequia and then to finally anchor between the Pitons, in St. Lucia where we rested for a couple days. There, sadly Tom, Cindra and Sam headed for the airport and I brought Champlain up to Rodney Bay.
At almost every stop we ran into fellow cruisers that we have met over the last year allowing them to easily join in our activities as we joined in theirs.