We’ve had a very busy couple of days – what day is it anyway?? You kind of lose track of those things when you move a lot. We managed to leave Grande Anse d’Arlet at 6 am on March 19th and made our jump down to the Pitons, St. Lucia. It was the first fantastic day of sailing we’ve had since arriving in the leeward islands. The wind was a perfect angle for us and we had all sails up!! We moved along nicely and even managed to stay in front of our speedy friends Sharron and John. What a great sail!
We arrived at the Pitons early afternoon and had arranged help getting onto the mooring ball in the steep bay. The Pitons were spectacular and could be seen for miles as we approached. We felt very small anchored between the 2 peaks but the view was awesome. It was a bit of a rough night though – very rolly!! After chatting with Sharron and John, we decided to sail past St. Vincent and go all the way to Bequia (the first island in the Grenadines chain). The wind was still looking good for Friday, March 20 so we made a plan to get going at 4 am and make the 55 nm trip in one day.
With all the rolling it was easy to get up early – well actually it was difficult to get any sleep for me!! Mark slept a bit but we were both up at 2 am and we’re dropping our mooring lines right at 4 am. It was very dark (no moon to help out) heading out of the Pitons bay and there was virtually no wind so we just motored until sunrise (which started around 5:30am). We really didn’t want to put sails up in the dark so the low wind worked well for us. As the sun came up, so did the wind. We put all sails up again and had another great sail to St. Vincent. Once behind the island, things got a little funky. The seas flattened out (which was very welcome) and the wind started going all over the place. We’d have no wind and minutes later it would be blowing like crazy. We got about halfway around the west side of St. Vincent when we decided to take down our sails and continue motor-sailing with the jib from that point. It was a very good decision because as we came out from behind St. Vincent, the wind picked up but the direction was more forward (ahead of the beam – not a great wind direction for us to sail). With the engine and the jib we managed to keep our 6knots (and more) of speed. We arrived at Bequia a little after 1 pm.
The first thing you must do when arriving in a new country is to clear into the customs and immigration. The office here has some interesting rules. They are open until 6 pm but charge overtime fees (of about $50) after 4 pm. So as soon as we were anchored, we put the dinghy in the water and Mark took off to clear us in. While he was gone I cleaned up, covered up the mizzen sail, put our porch shade screen back on and pulled out something for dinner. Mark was back onboard in time to help Sundog (Sharron and John were a bit behind us – about 1.5 hours) get clear in before the 4 pm deadline!
Today March 21 will be an exploration day in the morning but unfortunately a work day in the afternoon. We still have our macerator pump problem but the more urgent job is our fridge – the darn thing stopped working sometime on Thursday. Our freezer is still good so we’ve been moving stuff into there. Good thing we really didn’t have a lot of perishables in the fridge. Fingers crossed Mark gets it working today!!
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 