Sailing a Beam Reach (somewhat) to northern Saint Lucia
18 January 2025
• Rodney Bay, St Lucia
by Ken Hilk • Rainy and Overcast

Yesterday, after spending four days in Bequia, and having a really delightful reunion and catch-up with our good friends on Renegade, the crew on Lover Of The Light weighed anchor at 0500 in Admiralty Bay, unfurled the main sail and started making our way out to sea again. We shut our engine off after 15 minutes and got the genoa out, sailing with one reef in our main sail and one reef in the gennie.
We made the 71 mile sail to Rodney Bay in St Lucia in a little over 11 hours, sailing largely on a beam reach, making many sail adjustments as we ran into squalls, lifts and headers as the wind sometimes backed or veered. We had hours where we sailed close hauled and dealt with increased wind pressure up to 25 knots where we reefed the sails down. When the squalls passed, the sailing was usually smooth on a beam reach with apparent wind at 60°. To get better sea state conditions, we (along with several dozen other sailing vessels heading north) elected to sail through the lee of St Vincent and Saint Lucia, and of course we ran into several hours of no or very light winds where we chose to motor when boat speeds fell to 2-3 knots. Of course, Lover Of The Light was normally the last sailboat to turn her engine on! When the winds increased again, we were often in 18-20 knots of breeze coming directly off shore, and although in the lee of the islands we were sailing at 7-8 knots with all three sails under almost full canvas. All in all, a very successful sail as we averaged 6.3 knots boat speed for the trip, although we did end up motoring a little over 3 hours in total, including the last half hour where we motored directly into the wind in Rodney Bay.
While in Bequia, we got some hill running in, crossing the big ridge to the eastern side of the island, and one day went on a hike to "Firefly" which has an interesting small and short par 3 golf course. Wednesday, we went diving with our own tanks with Jeff and Julie from Renegade. The dive was great with excellent visibility, corals and marine life; however the skipper managed to have a negative incident with his I-phone on this excursion, further details possibly to be provided at a later date!
This morning, our intention is to sail the final 22 miles to the anchorages in southern Martinique. Although we have visited Martinique before, our stay was relatively brief at 3-4 days; this time we may be able to achieve the more idyllic cruiser's "plan to have no plan" and we may be staying in Martinique up to one month on the good ship Lover Of The Light!
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