We were met by Chris at the airport after longest wait in an immigration line ever. Chris took us back to the boat which had a welcoming vase of flowers, Caribbean products and a St Lucia T-shirt for everyone.
The boat was moored at Rodney Bay Marina which was showing the last signs of the ARC2008 celebrations. Hungry from our long trip, we went via the dinghy to a pizza and ribs place for tea with a play ground and the kids met some Caribbean boys and girls on the trampoline.
The boat was familiar and different at the same time. It had been through a lot of miles and different crew members since we were there last.
21/12: Rodney Bay
The kids and Chris went to local bakery to get breakfast and the kids went swimming with the kids from a boat called Cat Mousses. We ate in the marina and decided, as the Digicel people did their sound checks for the evening “jump up”, to provision and move on – as we couldn’t get fuel we simply moved out to anchor in Rodney Bay.We passed this "Pirates of the Caribbean" boat in the marina.
22/12: Anse Cochon
Once we’d fuelled, we made our way south. Our Christmas destination was Bequia in the Grenadines and we were aiming to get there for Christmas Eve. We stopped part way in an idyllic bay called Anse Cochon. We all got our first taste of snorkeling in the Caribbean as opposed to the Med.
Alex’s comments: More beautiful than the Mediterranean. Quite a lot of coral. Very fishy.
Soufriere: 23/12
We stopped off at Soufriere before heading down to Bequia overnight. This was our first view of the classic St Lucia Pitons.
It was also our first view of pigs and goats grazing on the beach!!
After an unfortunate incident which involved the local hospital and a crushed finger, we set off in the evening on what turned out to be a wild ride to Bequia. So wild that we were 6 miles from Bequia about 3 hours before sunrise – so we reduced speed to 2kts and finally sailed into the bay at around 6:30.
