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Mexican dinner / thinking ahead

by steve, on April 23rd, 2009 (Bees Knees, Dreamtime, St Lucia)

Shore night out was a lot of fun. We met up with Anne and Jim from Bees Knees and Ed and Linda from Dreamtime at Green Boley. Ed and Linda were a great couple and hopefully we’ll meet again sometime. We had a couple of drinks are Green Boley before heading off to the mexican where the food was very enjoyable.

Tomorrow we’re definitely out of here. We’ve been looking at the islands around us and sharing ideas with Bees Knees. They have a tighter time frame to reach Grenada than we do so our plans are set to diverge.

As they stand our plans are to head south to Canouan and stay a couple of nights there. There we will say our Au Revoirs with Anne and Jim as we head back north to Mustique. This sequence will hopefully reduced the effort of getting back upwind/up current to Mustique. Then we expect to head south to Worlds End Reef just off the east of Tobago Cays. Then we’ll head west to Mayreau threading through the Tobago Cays no doubt stopping from time to time.

From there it gets a bit vague. We may head down to Union, check out of the Grenadines then down to Carricou and check into Grenada. I’d like to squeeze in Petit Martinique as the provisioning is supposed to be pretty good there.

We need to get to Grenada by around the 15th of May so we have time to sort ourselves out before flying to NJ to see Ben graduate.

Today we expect to go for a walk. We may go for another dive on the hookah but that’s not settled yet. I’m off to town in a minute to drop trash, swap a book with one I want at a book swap and buy one more piece of fishing gear – a sinker – to help my line of pink squiddies to stay below the surface. Then we’ll be set for our fish bonanza.

Category: Bees Knees, Dreamtime, St Lucia | Here is my comment

St Lucia Tracks

by steve, on April 19th, 2009 (St Lucia, Tracks)

Here are the tracks from our second stint in St Lucia


View 2009 St Lucia in a larger map

Category: St Lucia, Tracks | Here is my comment

Where’s the wind?

by KC2RIY, on April 18th, 2009 (At Sea, Baliceaux, St Lucia)

We set off this morning shortly after 6am. The strongest winds we’ve seen have been 12 knots out of the ESE. That is just ok to get our Code Zero out and for a few hours that pulled us along. Now the winds have dropped to 6 knots and with a knot and a half current against us we can no longer sail. For now we are motor sailing and hoping the wind will pick up.

We have four lines out again. No fish so far. I’m seeing a pattern emerging here.

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Category: At Sea, Baliceaux, St Lucia | Here is my comment

Rocking and Rolling

by steve, on April 17th, 2009 (Bees Knees, St Lucia)

That describes our anchorage last night. The evening with Anne and Jim was great. The usual eating, drinking and (long) stories. The anchorage, unfortunately, never really settled down and both boats were churned around all night long. I slept through it but Helen was close to mutiny by the morning. I’ve never seen her so keen to move early. In fact, we were up and gone before we could contact Bees Knees. They knew it was a strong possibility we’d all move around the corner to Vieux Fort to escape the swell.

So here we are back outside the harbor. We’ve checked out of customs and immigration. Customs was straight forward as this was in the dock right by us. Immigration, however, was at the airport 2-3 miles away. We walked each way which helped pass the day and now it is done. On the way back we performed a final bit of minor provisioning at the supermarket on the way.

We’re now practically set to head south in the morning. We’d had some concerns about a northerly swell which may impact our primary plan but checking the weather sites I see the swell comes as far south as Guadeloupe. We are well clear. So our plan is to head to Baliceaux and anchor there a couple of days before heading off to either Bequia or Mustique to check into the Grenadines. Baliceaux is uninhabited and a passer by for charterers so hopefully it will not only be quiet (like Maria Island) but also calm (unlike Maria Island). We’ll be setting sail no later than 7am as it is nearly 50nm to our destination. We’ll be passing the east coast of St Vincent so we shouldn’t have issues with wind shadows.

One of the (sadly) exciting things about heading south is watching the latitude approach zero. We’ve been in the 13’s for some time. Soon we’ll be in the 12’s.

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Category: Bees Knees, St Lucia | Here is my comment

Maria Island

by steve, on April 16th, 2009 (Bees Knees, Nebula, St Lucia)

After writing yesterday’s blog we were approached by the one other boat in our anchorage – Brad who was captaining a 60 odd foot monohull called Blue Whale. He needed some help undoing a couple of screws and I was more than happy to oblige. He’s been a professional captain in the islands for a few years now. Apart from helping undo two screws we had a good chat about the islands and a show around the boat. Brad also gave me the coordinates of a good anchorage in Tobago Cays away from where everyone else goes. We must give this a go in a week or two. Before parting we invited Brad over to Dignity to have a look around.

This morning around 9am we set sail just around the corner to Maria Island. Even though it wasn’t too far we decided to see if we could sail most of the way. We headed out into the Atlantic for 40 minutes then tacked back. With the wind dropping and quite a strong current we were heading back along our original track so we turned on the motor and made it there without too much faffing around. Approaching Maria Island we were tantalized by a streak of turquoise visible between the mainland and the island where we had to squeeze through the reefs. We found the cut in the reefs quite easily and kept in 60 feet of water until we were clear of the breakers around us. We turned into Maria Island and, sheltered from the ocean, dropped our anchor in her lee.

As we ate lunch Bees Knees, who we’d been in contact in the morning, rounded the corner, came through the cut and anchored next to us. We are the only two boats around here which is great.

This afternoon I dusted off the Hookah and scraped the barnacles off both hulls. The underwater bit takes two hours – double that when you consider all the gear prep and tidying. This evening Anne and Jim are coming over for a barbecue. I’m feeling hungry after this afternoon’s exertion.

FOOTNOTE: While here we noticed a couple wind kiting for some hours. We were later to learn that they were cruisers from “Nebula”.

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Category: Bees Knees, Nebula, St Lucia | One reader has left a comment, here is mine
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