Pigeon Beach

Well – that’s what I’m calling it. It doesn’t have a name on any map I have but it’s there so I’m giving it a name.

Helen and I went ashore around 3pm to take a look about. The bay has a small beach with dark sand – a reminder that Souffriere, the active volcano, is not far off. The beach is bordered by 20 or so establishments with half of them being dive/snorkeling operations taking folks off to the most excellent diving near by. The rest are restaurants, snack busses and souvenir shops – bordering on the tacky. The whole place seems geared to the diving/snorkeling and feeding / selling to those finishing their trip.

We walked about a mile south to a supermarket and picked up some extra provisions. Now back on the boat we’ll settle down for the evening, see what sort of sunset we get (they’re all different) and probably watch some more Red Dwarf (last nights entertainment).

The west side of the island is turning out to be quite cloudy so the solar panels are helping much less than normal. I’m really glad I improved the charging rate as it’s keeping the average genset run time well down – averaging much less than an hour even on these cloudy days. Demand will be higher and hence fuel consumption but this does bring both fuel and maintenance costs down.