We left Blue Lagoon and motored against wind and 2 kts of tide along the south coast of St Vincent, then the engine overheat alarm went off.  It turned out to be due to a split in the rubber boot on the end of the heat exchanger that allowed all the coolant to drain into the bilge.  So now under sail we tacked up the coast of St Vincent, through a squall then a calm (may have been due to backwash from the volcano Soufriere).  It’s amazing how well you can sail when reaching for the engine start button isn’t an option.  Luckily we had Jane and Steve with us to help man the winches.  A nice reach over to the Pitons on St Lucia, then close hauled again up the coast to anchor under sail during another amazing squall in Rodney Bay at 1 am.  We had meant to stop en route, but with no engine it made sense to make straight for the big open anchorage.  We got towed into the marina in the morning and unfortunately are still waiting for the part for the engine to arrive.

Meanwhile we have been catching some local culture; a charity concert of Caribbean music on Saturday night then a visit to a Pan yard on Monday.  That’s steel pan drums not cooking pans.  The visit was organised by the local (yacht) cruiser net.  After learning about the history and how the drums are made we took up our positions with  the various drums and rather painfully managed to play “when the saints go marching in”.  All good fun, then we got to hear the experts play.

We’ve also been trying some local foods: breadfruit is quite nice roasted, also tried Soursop and Love Apples.  Food is not cheap here and much of it is imported from USA.  We are looking forward to shopping in Martinique and getting some decent cheese.

The wait for parts stretched to serval weeks.  We met Mrg and Simon on Rustler 42 “Margansie ” berthed next door, they were waiting for parts for their watermaker and on their way to the Pacific and New Zealand.  We were very pleased to share their hire car for a trip round the island – the volcano and mud baths (meant to be very good for the skin)  and Diamond Falls and botanic gardens near Soufriere.  Then the Tet Paul nature trail, very enjoyable.  Steve practised taking pics of humming birds with his new camera.

New Caribbean shorts for Steve

1 night at Saline bay Myreau, then on to Admiralty bay Bequia.  There was a huge Manta ray in the harbour as we went in.  We had fun stocking up at the market though the stall holders are rather intimidating all clamouring for you to buy from them and not their comrades but also insisting you try various produce that they slice off for you.  Steve managed to buy some new shorts in an exotic print, bright but they fit.  Several pairs of his had bitten the dust with the constant wear, he’d had them for years in Scotland.  Also one pair I got him earlier in a bright blue colour leaked so much dye that after a rain storm he had blue legs!

We sailed from Bequia up to Blue Lagoon at the south end of St Vincent, where we could clear out of St Vincent in preparation for heading to StLucia tomorrow, having got used to the Shengen rules in Europe it is a shock to have to clear customs and immigration between islands out here and you have to allow time for it.  Everyone at Blue Lagoon Marina is very friendly and helpful, especially pilot Mike who took us in through the reef and Marina manager Desmond.  The advert offers a free rum punch for crew of visiting yachts and this time we managed to claim it – the brew that Desmond brought over was very nice but Powerful!

From Tobago Cays went to Union Is, found a lovely anchorage in Chatham bay for lunch and ended up going back there for the night as Clifton, the main town was very crowded and exposed to the wind that was getting up.  It also rained rather hard (nothing to what they have had at home of course) the islands are all green so obviously it has to rain some of the time.  Then to Petit Martinique for water, diesel and stores, then just across the water (less than a mile) to anchor at Petit St Vincent for the night.  A beautiful small island, white sand beach and Palm trees, it is a private resort but the beach is accessible (and the bar and restaurant if you have the money).  It is forecast to be a bit windier for the next few days, and we will head slowly back north up the island chain.

We approached cautiously through the north channel, following the leading line, then even more carefully through the cut between the islands of Petit Bateau and Petit Rameau as it is only 2.7m deep then took a buoy near the turtle sanctuary area behind the outer Horseshoe reef, so you can see the sea breaking to windward.  The photos do not do it justice, the colours of the wonderful clear sea, sky and sand are wonderful and it is like being on a Pacific island except that there are rather a lot of boats here.  Vendors go round selling bread, t shirts etc, but they are not too pushy.  The Park rangers collect the money for the mooring (45 EC$) and 10EC$ per person.  Unfortunately it has been a bit windy overnight and this morning,  we are hoping it will drop so we can do more swimming and snorkelling . Have already seen turtles!

From St Vincent we sailed south the short distance to Bequia and anchored in Admiralty Bay off Princess Margaret beach. Explored  ashore by Di-Di’s  water taxi, except Anita swam, a very busy vibrant place, lots of shops, stalls and cafes/restaurants, and lots of boats on moorings or anchored.  Had coffee and ice cream or cake at the Gingerbread cafe and decided we must visit again on our way north. In the morning we sailed round to Friendship Bay on the south side of the island, much quieter with fewer boats, a beautiful bay with sandy beach and a rocky bit with coral for snorkelling.

Next morning we headed south to the island of Canouan.  We anchored in a lovely bay for lunch and a snorkel, we also saw Hejira who we know from the ARC+ rally.  We moved on to Charlestown Bay, the main town, where we anchored for the night.  Canouan has seen a lot of luxury tourist development in recent years, but this year has been the subject to security warnings on the yachting web sites after several yachts were broken into.  We locked up carefully and removed loose stuff, shoes etc from the cockpit and had no trouble, it may be as reported 2nd hand from Hejira that the bad guys have already been caught and locked up.  The bad reports might explain why there were very few boats in, and when we went ashore in the morning the posh hotel seemed empty, which is a shame for the island if the problems have been resolved.  We had a nice run ashore listening to the singing from the churches as we passed, everyone was very friendly and the place seemed quite prosperous. We got some stores in the shops and fruit market (though unfortunately the wine we got – a familiar brand – was off, all 3 bottles).

New crew, friends Jane and Steve Parfitt joined us on Sunday 10 Jan.  We set off south the next afternoon, stopping overnight at Soufriere, then on down to St Vincent.  Remembered to take down the St Lucia flag and substitute the one for St Vincent and the Grenadines half way across between the islands.  We had a nice sail and motor sail down the coast of St Vincent, very scenic, it is another high volcanic island, all green and forested with small towns along the shore.  We moored in the Blue Lagoon Marina right at the south end of the island. You have to go through a shallow passage in the reef to enter, watching the waves break around us.  At least we got to go through the normal marked passage, unlike friends from ARC+ in Beneteau 47 Orion who had to have a pilot to go through the deeper but unmarked south passage (marked Dangerous to yachts on the chart) as they draw too much for the other one.

Today we got a taxi to nearby Kingstown which is the capital of the island and had a very informative tour around the lovely botanic gardens including a descendant of the original Breadfruit tree brought  by Captain Bligh of mutiny on the Bounty fame and lots of other marvellous trees and flowering plants.  Then  lunch at Basil’s and shopping in the market.  Also saw the St Vincent parrot, now being bred in captivity as becoming very rare.

The marina people were very helpful,we got water diesel and petrol for the outboard. When the time came to leave Mike piloted us out of the south entrance through the reef!

For the Christmas holiday we were joined by my sister Wendy, husband Chris and nephews Andrew and Dylan.  Timshel seemed much smaller with 6 on board!  Conditions were fairly blustery, but after a few days exploring St Lucia – Marigot bay, Rodney bay and Pigeon island, we had a great sail north to Martinique.

We anchored in a bay called Grande Anse d’Arlet. Beach party on Christmas Eve, lovely presents on Christmas morning (how many get a present of 6 hunky men from their sister – sadly they were very small as they are drink/glass markers), the adults had glittery antlers and the boys had stockings, then off for a snorkel, it was like being in an aquarium over the rocks at the edge of the bay, and there were turtles swimming round the boat.  Christmas dinner was in a restaurant by the beach 15 boats and 56 people together. We thought the service might be a bit slow what with there being so many of us, but they were great and the food was good.  Dylan got a wonderful folding hat in the secret Santa, unfortunately the conch shell Andrew got was confiscated as not allowed in hand luggage.

Martinique is different (it is after all a full department of France) in that they are no “vendors” coming round the boats pestering you to buy everything from bread and fruit to palm baskets and no boat boys wanting to tie your boat to the mooring or whatever for money or offering various services.  And you got wonderful bread and pastries from the bakery.

We were back in St Lucia for new year as sadly the crew had to fly back on 1st Jan, we were so sorry to see them go.

The adults got antlers

Lovely flowers

Puffa penguin came to stay

Andrew at the helm

Church on Martinique

Justin Biebers yacht?

Dear Friends

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Caribbean

love  from Anita and Steve xxx

Tree planting

ARC+ Plaque

Tree planting

East coast

Christmas in Castiries

Castries

Marigot bay

The Pitons

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

Timshel crossed the finish line in Rodney Bay St Lucia at the crack of dawn on Thursday morning 14 days 20 hrs 7 min 46 secs (by my watch anyway).  As promised someone from World Cruising Club was there on the pontoon to meet us and help us tie up and the guy from St Lucia tourist board was there  with rum punch and basket of fruit despite the early hour.  And we did drink the rum as it gradually sunk in that we really had arrived.

Also see http://www.pbo.co.uk/news/evacuation-of-four-crew-from-arc-yacht-magritte-25471 for description and photo of our arrival (after the bit about the boat that sank).

All done under sail, we did not use any diesel for the passage.  Unfortunately the generator broke the first day, luckily the wind generator and the towed generator together gave us enough battery charging so we didn’t have to start the engine at all. We did turn off anything nonessential – the echosounder, the chart plotter and mainly used the wind vane steering. We did run the fridge, the VHF, the AIS, wind instruments and log, lights as appropriate but most of the power went on the SSB radio with 2 daily schedules and getting emails and grib files. It was a pretty easy passage with good winds from the expected direction (ie behind us) only a few calms and squalls to contend with so we made good time. I guess that’s why they call it the milk run. We were very excited to be here but didn’t really feel we’d done enough to cross an ocean. Just now enjoying St Lucia and getting the boat ready for guests (my sister and family).