St. Lucia February 14- March 1, 2012

The harbors we’ve explored are surprisingly open. They are all on the lee side of the islands, often barely more than a slight indentation in the coastline. The view north South and west is usually open sea. Every night we get to see a sunset over the water, sometimes a cloudless fireball being sliced by the deep blue horizon, others just a expanded puff of cotton candy that gradually fades to black. It is almost the same here in Rodney bay except that to the north there is a peninsula jutting into the bay with twin peaks about 600 feet high. We are anchored here with about 30 other boats in this somewhat protected cove. The American flag flying off a transom is much more prevalent than In any port we’ve encountered thus far. Perhaps it is because English is st Lucia’s official language. There are also flags from around the world on other boats: Norway, Germany, Italy, France, and others.

Anyway, sometime after our afternoon at the beach, it got rough.m When the waves began to roll in from the north, we watched as our depth meter fluctuated between 14 and 18 feet while at anchor. Four feet doesn’t seem like a lot, but that gradual rising and falling accompanied by a side to side tilting made the anchorage untenable. This was surprising because it was in fact one of the more protected harbors. Regardless, we moved our boat into the northwest corner behind pigeon island directly in front of a sandals resort. It was completely calm, so we were joined by many boats, including Moana and Raftan.

Now, we have moved the boat into the marina. It is very large with many international boats. This is a popular port for boats that are crossing from Europe and participating in the World Arc. Those boats have already moved southward, so mainly we’ve met Americans.

Rebel raiser is from fl has two girls Sail and Sky (10&12) who have always lived on the boat and been home schooled. Three little birds is a large catamaran from HI with 3 boys, griffin, jake and Luke (11,10&5). They are in month 3 of a 3 year trip they hope to finish in Thailand. There is another boat with 4 kids who’ve just begun there 1 year adventure, but we haven’t spoke with them much yet. There are also 4 of 5 expect kids who play at the marin pool.

It is fabulous for Gigi and Jason to have all these kids to runa round with. They play in the pool in the afternoon, after mornings of school. After dinner, around 7:30 they all reconnect and like to go down to the climbing tree at the other end of the marina. This has been a struggle for me because I believe the kids are a bit young for running free in the dark, but the security guards watch them. EJ also assures me that the day laborers who congregate at the marina are also cognizant of the need to keep visitors safe for the good of their own economy.

Days later:
Waiting for royalty here at Rodney Bay because tomorrow is independence day and prince William and princess kate are due to visit. Oddly, with all the stunning resorts here they’ve opted to stay on a navy frigate out in the anchorage. The security is somewhat intense, but nothing compared to the usual display in NYC when the mayor comes through.

It turned out to be Prince Edward and his wife Sofia, the son and daughter-in-law of the Queen, Charles’s youngest brother. They cme ahore from the British naval frigate that had been anchored in Rodney bay. We spoke with the servicemen who launched them in. Not too much interesting to say about this, but we’ve done some excellent sightseeing.

We did the tet paul nature trail, mon cabril estate for awesome zip lining, sulphur springs, Jealousie resort beach between the pitons, sulphur springs drive in volcano and mud bath, anse la raye Friday night fish festival, the lighthouse in vouex forte, and the Our Planet museum. We drove around the island two times to see all the towns and sights. The roads are not good so the 50 miles takes 3 hours at least. Everyone drives on the left. The roads are hilly, unlit and in many places one lane because mudslides and erosion causes entire lanes to fall into the crevasse.

The kids blog about some of this on their pages.

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