Where now?
Approaching Soufriere Bay & The Pitons mountains
For various reasons, we turned South from Antigua giving Mervyn and Amanda a lift to Les Saintes. Trying to be correct, we stopped in Deshaies to clear in, but found the the ‘office’, a T-shirt shop closed for lunch from 12.00 to 16.00. Just our luck that we had arrived a few minutes after the overworked clothing vendor had collapsed for his dejeuner 😦
Back in Portsmouth, we met up with Ocean Rainbow, Claire and James, and arranged a days tour covering the key bits we missed last time.
Then there was clearing up after the fight between a pineapple and a toilet roll….. The fallout being similar to a snowfall. They had been in adjacent net hammocks and rubbed each other up the wrong way whilst we were out at sea. Shredded loo rolls are not a pretty sight!
Getting bits sent out ought to be simple these days, but it is never quite so. Back in January, we ordered some parts which were duly despatched via TNT. By mid-Feb all was still silent, so we started chasing. The tracker indicated that they had got to Antigua, but had yet to arrive in St Lucia. Phone calls and emails round the planet, only to eventually discover they had been delivered back on 5th Feb……, so it was back to Rodney Bay to collect.
Sailing between Martinique and St Lucia has the added spectacle of a flock of brown boobies that use sailboats for finding food. As the boats disturb the flying fish, the birds fly very close to the sails, gliding in the airflow until they swoop.
A sail down to Soufriere yesterday produced a new first, whales spouting and breaching close to us. However we failed to get a decent photo of this 😦
Back in Rodney Bay, we were delighted to bump into Rod & Michelle (Charlotta) just back from the UK. Hopefully we will be sailing in company up to the next island.
Frustratingly it looks as if we now need to head back to Martinique, both to get the new engine serviced by a main dealer and also to sort a problem with the generator. The latter had been one reason to come to Rodney Bay, but the engineer here is off sick unfortunately. Never mind, the wine is much cheaper there!
Freebooter 