Finally!

St. Lucia

The open-ocean trip from the tip of Martinique to Rodney Bay on the northeast corner of St. Lucia was very enjoyable. We averaged about 7.5 knots on a beam reach (i.e., from the side) with a typical trade wind velocity of 15-18 knots. Even the seas behaved themselves; in fact, outside of the long passage through the Anegada straight from Virgin Gorda, BVI to St. Martin, when we pounded into wind and waves for 13 hours, we’ve been happy with our passages. Of course, outside of that first passage we make sure that the conditions are right for us before we set off.

I’m not sure that we have a very good feel for St. Lucia. It certainly is a lush and mountainous island, though not on the order of Dominica. It also has quite a negative reputation in certain areas, specifically most of the mid-island southward. That’s a large area for sailors such as ourselves to want to avoid, and it is arguably the most beautiful. There are two problems that have arisen in recent years: boat break-ins and boat boy hassles. The first is self-explanatory. Boat boy hassles could be described as follows: when coming up to a mooring in the Pitons National Park, for instance, a boat boy would race ahead, grab the mooring line, and expect payment when he hands it over to you. In the interests of keeping the peace – and our boat safe – of course we pay. The normal charge is 20 EC $, or about $7 US, a very little amount for more peace of mind.

The real hassles occur when there are problems between the boat boy holding the mooring line and another who wants it for another boat. In fact, we were caught in between a major unpleasantness between 2 such parties and final just motored away. Our boat boy followed and found us another mooring further off in the same beautiful anchorage; we were glad to pay the 50 EC $ fee which goes to support the continuation of the fantastic natural beauty of this park.

We definitely see the gray area here – we know that it’s hard to make a living on these islands, but we are also very competent in handling moorings ourselves. Apparently this problem is only worse on St. Lucia’s southerly neighbor, St. Vincent. In addition, more violent crimes occur there against visitors, including the shooting to death of a sailor from Germany just 4 days ago. Needless to say, we totally bypassed St. Vincent.

But back to St. Lucia, particularly Rodney Bay. As we enter this expansive bay the headlands on the north side of this anchorage offer great protection to the boaters. This is Pigeon Island which, actually, had been an island until a connective peninsula was built. Pigeon Island had been used by the British to guard St. Lucia from the French and we could still see the fort used to defend the area. This turned out to be one of our favorite walks in this area. However, on the manmade peninsula a massive Sandals resort resides with a eye-catching orange roof, but no 28 flavors of ice cream. We anchored fairly nearby and sometimes enjoyed – and sometimes not – the excitement that the jet ski drivers from Sandals voiced out (very) loud. The music coming from that shore was very bearable in contrast to other anchorages.

Since two years ago, when a swimmer was literally cut in half by a speedboat that did not see him, the employees at resorts in this outer harbor area strongly encourage swimmers to make their presence loudly known. Larry took this to heart, sweet hubbie, and made me a pull-along from a life jacket. A picture of this is in the gallery. Even though there is a drag effect when I use it, depending on the current direction, I do feel much safer and much more visible.

There is lots of retail in Rodney Bay, but not too much else. We did walk over to the other side of the island to Cas en Bas for lunch and to watch the kite surfers in the protected cove. They are so amazing! I can’t begin to guess the speed at which the better ones go; I just hope that there are no just-under-the-surface obstacles to grab their boards and that they’re able to dance around the other kite surfers without a problem. It is a thrill to see them move so quickly.

Speaking about thrills, as mentioned above, at the Pitons National Park we moored in between these two huge lumps and marveled that they simply jutted upward hundreds of feet from sea level; these Pitons are the epitome of St. Lucia’s unique beauty. Perhaps if we had made this trip a decade or so ago we would have felt comfortable with leaving the boat locked all day at a nearby mooring while we hiked ashore, but not anymore. And that is a pity.

So, we actually saw little of the island. We would have loved to see more. The resorts that are scattered about offer great security for their patrons, but we sailors don’t have that expectation and we have to exercise caution sufficient to ease our concerns. The ones most hurt by the reduced spending by people such as ourselves are the ones least able to afford it. This had been the case in Portsmouth, Dominica until the boat boys agreed to take turns sharing what we sailors bring in and, in return, they provided great security to our anchored boats. That blueprint is out there for these other islanders to copy; perhaps in another decade things will be different?