Tracks South and St. Lucia

We motored down the coast of Dominica and had a brisk sail back to Martinique.  We spent two nights back in St. Pierre so we could satisfy one last craving of baguette and patissiere before sailing down to St. Lucia on a rainy day.  The stormy weather made for unsettled winds and we had a decent, but at times frustratingly slow sail, compounded with a wicked current that made slow going for a few hours but we were greeted along the way by a pod of jumping dolphins.  We arrived just before sunset to the Rodney Bay Marina and tied up for a few days after covering about 100 miles from Dominica.  St. Lucia suffers from some security issues, so we figured the marina would give us peace of mind, and while the people are extremely nice here, there are folks stopping by at all hours of the day hoping for work varnishing, cleaning or selling fruit which means we've been extra careful leaving the boat, even just to use the showers.

The weather continued to be rainy for the next three days, ultimately filling a bucket we had left on deck up with 8 inches of water!  Navigator got a good cleaning, inside and out, and Chris did a lot of work on the Cutterman's Guide to Navigation Problems, you can check it out HERE.  Kellee read and sampled the yummy frou frou coffee and we both enjoyed some pizza, made by a guy who came to St. Lucia from Italy to share his serious pizza making skills.  When the weather finally cleared up, Chris did some boat varnishing and we ventured out to the nearby mall.  We had just run out of propane for the fantail grill and were excited to find some canisters in the ACE hardware and Kellee found a neat book about the fruits, veggies and herbs of the Caribbean and how to grow them.  Depending on where we end up putting down roots for awhile, she wants to try her hand growing some legit roots, we'll see if she can turn that thumb green!

Today is finally sunny again and HOT, we are approaching "Lahaina Noon", which means we'll pass under the sun, and it will be as close to us as it will ever be, and then will set to the north of us...we think that will seem a little weird, but neat.  The heat of the day usually drives us into the boat or into the water, luckily the marina has a pool and we are planning to venture over to one of the beaches for the afternoon.  After so many awesome adventures in Guadeloupe and Dominica, we aren't really motivated to explore St. Lucia, so we'll stick to Rodney Bay, spend one quick night between the Pitons (steep twin mountains right on the coast), then make tracks another 100 miles to the Grenadines.  We're going to skip St. Vincent, we hear the boat boys there are very aggressive and that theft can be a problem.  We figure if we really want to see that island, we can take a day ferry from Bequia (our next destination).

The Grenadines promise lots of little, sandy cays with some good snorkeling and palm trees.  From there we'll be counting down the last month of this season's cruising and gearing up for the Eur-Afric-Oz expedition...more on that soon.  The marina is thinning out, the season is quickly wrapping up, most of the boats heading across the Atlantic are staging in Antigua or St. Maarten, and Antigua race week signals the last big event before many boats head for destinations outside of the hurricane belt.  We are definitely feeling the effects, the anchorages are less crowded and we saw our marina neighbor strip down and clean his boat and haul out for the season.  We're keeping a weather eye on the hurricane forecast, once we're in the Grenadines, we'll be only a day's sail from Trinidad and will be able to avoid any developing early season storm.  We'll check in from Bequia and should have a nice night's sail under the full moon.

There are a couple new videos on the "video" link above that chronicle our recent adventures in Guadeloupe, Dominica, and Martinique.