Rodney Bay Marina is at the extreme other end of the island from the airport. The roads are generally narrow, windy and only 2 lanes, so the trip to the marina took nearly 2 hours by taxi because we hit "rush hour" in the island capital of Castries. We arrived at Avventura just after sunset, tired but glad to be back on board. From arrangements made in November, our local Rasta "boat guy", Vision, had the boat exterior clean and the metal parts all polished. The interior was in better shape than we expected.
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| Back in Rodney Bay |
Our good friends Rob and Sharon Clark from Plano, TX flew in for a week of cruising late on Saturday January 20. Rob is one of my oldest friends from Topeka (we go back to nursery school) and we were debate partners in high school. The Clarks are very good sports and adjusted well to our V-berth cabin and the lack of privacy on a sailboat. As things turned out, they got a bit more adventure than they may have bargained for.
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| Ready for the Clarks to arrive for dinner |
Our week with the Clarks started with two nights in the Rodney Bay marina. We took a long dinghy ride out of the lagoon to the national park at Pidgeon Island, where we had lunch at the Jambe de Bois restaurant and climbed up to the old Fort, where the views of St. Lucia and across the channel to Martinique are magnificent. We lounged away the afternoon drinking beers on the beach.
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| The steep climb to the fort |
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| The local brew |
On Monday Jan 22 we readied the boat and left the marina, sailing south to the famed Pitons, the two sharp mountains on the SW coast of St. Lucia that appear in every tourist picture of this island. We took a mooring in a national park between the two mountains. The location was incredibly beautiful, but the wind funnels between the two mountains there, and regularly blasted the boat with 30 plus mph winds. Around us in this anchorage were a few other sailboats of our size, but there were also a half dozen "megayachts" of 150-200 plus foot lengths. We enjoyed the same magnificent sunset as those boats, however, plus a great dinner from Cindy's galley. Due to the frequent wind gusts, our night was a bit "rolly" and less than completely comfortable.
Our unexpected adventures with the Clarks started the next morning. With batteries lower than I like, I tried to start the new generator, but my generator battery did not have quite enough juice to turn over the engine. With no "house" charging system on the primary engine, I had no other way to charge the batteries for our lighting, refrigerators, chartplotters, etc., so we had to get this problem fixed ASAP. Our original plan of staying a day or two and visiting a nearby volcanic area for mudbaths and waterfall had to be revised.. We departed the park and headed north to Marigot Bay, where I found local mechanic Imbert who loaned us a battery to get our generator started.
Marigot Bay is a fine place to relax. The moorings in the inner harbor are managed by a large resort hotel there, which gave us rights to use the resort's very nice pools and facilities. They have a swim-up bar! We enjoyed dinner at Doolittles, which included cooking our meats on hot flat rocks that they bring to the table.
On our second day in Marigot, we decided to have a bit of adventure. We all got in the dinghy and motored out of the small harbor to a large beach south of the harbor entrance. This is a really "wild" beach, which tourists seldom visit, and we discovered there is a very good reason for that. There is no dinghy dock, so we realized that we were going to have to run in and beach our dinghy without any knowledge of how deep the water was and what dangers there might be such as rocks to harm the prop. We ran in carefully under increasingly threatening skies- another rain storm was moving in. Turns out we chose the wrong spot to land, as the surf there was stronger than I thought. Within seconds of landing, waves were filling the boat from behind, making it very hard for the 4 of us to drag it up the grade of the beach, and before we could react, the boat was full of seawater and sand! It also had started to rain. Perfectly miserable, as I was trying to bail water out and nudge the dinghy higher on the beach. I could see that my guests were very concerned.
Out of nowhere an ancient islander appeared next to us with a large plastic bucket giving us advice on how to turn the boat away from the surf. This fellow was wiry and had only a few of his teeth. His age was indeterminate and later a subject of our debate, but he could have been in his late 70s or even 80s. His only clothing was a tattered pair of shorts held onto his rail frame with a bit of rope around his waist. The zipper was missing from his fly, leaving a gaping hole which all of us tried to avoid looking at. After another minute or two, "Fruit Man" also appeared from the other end of the beach, and with six persons bailing and dragging, we managed to get the boat far enough up the beach where we could actually start the process of emptying the boat and cleaning out all the sand.
After 20 minutes of feverish work and tips paid to our helpers, the sun came back out and we were ready to leave. We had to launch the boat and get a good enough push that we would not land back in the surf with the same problem. I feared that water had entered our submerged fuel tank, so I did not have faith that the engine would start or run for very long. Fruit Man helped us launch and I pulled and pulled on my little outboard and finally it sputtered and started - YES! I threw it in gear and headed out from the beach. Immediately we were inundated by jumping small fish, little silver-sides, perhaps 3 inches long each. We must have been in the middle of a large school and when the engine started, they panicked and all flew up and hit us in our chests, faces, hats, etc. Oh, this was the perfect ending for this adventure, whacked by hundreds of little fish! Rob Clark became our fish whisperer and scooped up something like 8 of them from the floor of the dinghy, returning them to the sea. We returned to Marigot harbor and spent the rest of the day on a little beach there with the Russian and Italian tourists, happy to have a dinghy dock and guys to bring us drinks.
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| The view from our beach chairs |
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| Rob's Folly Beach |
The Clarks were good sports through all of this. We spent a fun day on the nearby Reduit beach and then ended their week with a trip to the Friday Night Jump Up street party. The funky vibe and mellow crowd made the evening fun for everyone. The Clarks left us Saturday afternoon Jan 27.
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| The Clarks are real sailors now! |
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| Rob and Sharon on Reduit Beach |
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| Friday Night Jump Up! |
We spent most of the next week lazy in Rodney Bay. There was some cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry, etc., but there was also time for reading, napping and laying in the pool. Our "house" alternator was re-installed. Regis Electronics finally solved our water maker problem. Relaxing time, but by late in the week we were going a bit stir-crazy.
Friday Feb 2, we checked out of St Lucia in the Customs office and checked out of the marina. Saturday morning we left Rodney Bay and sailed north to Martinique, arriving early afternoon at Fort de France, in a large bay on the West side of the island. However, we found the anchorage there to be full and rolly, and we could not get our anchor to set, so we crossed several miles over to the south side of the bay and dropped anchor at Anse Mitan.. This is a little beach town with several hotels. We missed the customs office open hours, so we decided to stay on the boat that night and not go ashore. The night was somewhat rolly and not very comfortable.
With predictions of worsening weather, the next morning we decided to leave the W coast and headed down and around the S coast of Martinique to St. Anne, a large and very popular anchorage. We passed by Diamond Rock on the way which was actually once commissioned as a British sloop, the HMS Diamond Rock, because of its strategic location.
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| Cannons were hoisted to the top, A garrison of 120 men slept in caves |
As I have previously described, checking in and out of Commonwealth countries is a bureaucratic puzzle, with many different forms (all requiring similar info), several different offices and lots of official stamping of various documents. Those former UK colonials love to stamp things! The French islands are completely different, as evidenced by our check-in at St. Anne on a computer terminal in the Snack Bou Bou sandwich shop. You type some stuff into the terminal, hit send, print out a form, and pay the guy at the sandwich shop 4 Euros. EASY. No officious, grumpy customs or immigration officers.
Snack Bou Bou was setting up for a Superbowl crowd that evening, as they had cable and a TV ready for American cruisers. Not having much interest this year, we opted for a walk around the town, had mojitos at a beach bar, and then dinner at a little French cafe. As we were finishing dinner it began to rain, so we waited to depart until we thought that the rain was over. It was now quite dark. We found our wet dinghy on the dock and departed but within a minute it started to rain again, at times quite heavily. Now we were in a little boat in a dark, crowded anchorage, with no flashlight, with wind and rain ramping up. Cindy whipped out her cell phone to serve as some bit of forward lighting for us, but we only had the vaguest notion of where our boat was. We motored through the driving rain, unlit boats jumping out of the gloom right in front of us. We were soaked and cold, but finally found Avventura and were very happy to be back on board.
Next day we enjoyed visiting beaches on both the north and south side of St. Anne, including a nice lunch at People Beach, and had two nights in the anchorage.
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| Fancy drinks at People Beach |
While this treatment may have been "innocent", I can't help but think the Dockmaster was showing this American who was the boss. Docking in this marina is very crowded and also a tense affair, with no docks between boats but only our bumpers. Also they do not have US power, so it is a rather hot and stuffy place for us.
Once in the marina, however, we discovered some very friendly cruisers. Jeff, a New Yorker on an Amel 54 ketch, was our next door neighbor and had us over for drinks several nights in a row. He introduced us to Leo and Margaret from Austria on Ying Yang, also an Amel, and I learned that Leo had been a commercial hot air balloon pilot in his home country for many years. We had a lot of fun talking ballooning. We also met Dan and Laurie on BeBe, a retired couple from Chicago.
Another highlight was breakfast at a little cafe across the street from the marina. We loved the petit dejuener, including excellent baguette, individual butter and jam in tropical flavors (today was mango), freshly squeezed OJ and cafe au lait, all for about $7. Tres delicieux!
On our last full day in Le Marin, we rented a car and drove back over to Anse Mitan and Fort de France to do some chopping and sightseeing. Our rental, as in all the French islands, was a barebones little diesel sedan with a very stiff clutch. We discovered that traffic in and out of the capital area is terrible. Lots of stop and go, much on steep hillsides, giving my L leg a very tiring clutch workout. We enjoyed walking around the "big city" in these parts, but after nearly 2 hours of traffic jams, I sometimes wondered if my clutch leg was going to hold out. It did, but barely.
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| St. Louis Cathedral, Fort de France |
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| Schoelcher Library, built in France, brought over in pieces |
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| Schoelcher library inside |
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| Rob in front of the "Everything's a Euro" store |
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| Fruit and Vegetable boat at Rodney Bay |
