And of course there were parties! Friday night drinks on the pirate ship followed by the regular jump- up at Gros Ilet – a street party with (very) loud music, food and drink. Saturday we went on another ARC tree planting expedition. Why are we planting trees in a rain forest you may well ask? The answer is that we are planting a different kind of trees – shallow rooted banana trees are taken out and substituted with mahogany and lemon and lime which should help prevent land slides. Anyway we also got a nice tour around the island. We all got back to the marina just in time to welcome Odyssey, the last boat in our group, so there was an impromptu party on her pontoon. Sunday was the St Lucia welcome party, on the green by the marina and too much rum punch, then Wednesday the prize giving and farewell party at Pigeon Island. This was also the welcome party for the main ARC. Good music, but too much booze and not enough food. Steve got a bottle of rum as one of the volunteer SSB net coordinators, otherwise we didn’t win anything. Hejira won the prize for best blog – the skipper, Nick, did tell us later though that their Satphone bill was over $1000, must have been all the photos they sent. We were however surprised to find that on corrected time we placed 5th in Class B. Apart from having a lower handicap than most, we benefitted from not having used the engine at all, motoring hours were penalised quite heavily as it was a good wind year. https://www.worldcruising.com/content/S635851164242863569/ARC+%20Leg%202%20-%20Results%20by%20Class.pdf
Timshel81 