Passage to Bequia

We left Rodney Bay Saturday morning. Leaving a harbor involves
so many steps: filling the boat’s water tank ( up to 1000
liters), checking out with customs, checking out of the marina,
making sure that everything is stowed away, tying up lines,
pulling up the ladder, closing the hatches, putting away the
fenders, taking down the courtesy flag of the country we are in,
re-fueling ( only occasionally)… It is really a big process.
We keep a check-list that we go through each time because
without it we invariably forget something. We ended up at the
fuel dock at about 11:00 a.m. under the scorching sun. It takes
a while to fill up a tank that holds 600 liters of diesel.
Luckily it was only about 1/3 empty. It was a relief to pull out
of the harbor and into the sea where the air was much cooler. We
sailed to the Pitons – the famous mountains on the S.W. side of
Saint Lucia, and got some help picking up a mooring from one of
the official boat boys in the area. The moorings are safe, but
it takes some getting used to as they are incredibly close to
the side of the mountain. It was so hot that we immediately went
for a snorkel to cool off. Sunset was beautiful, but the
anchorage was very rolly as it is quite exposed to swells. We
set up our “rocker stopper” for the first time. Without going
into detail at this time, the rocker stopper is a gadget that we
bought that we have to hook up to a pole off the side of our
boat and it is supposed to reduce the amount of rolling the boat
does in a rolly anchorage. Since it was the first time we did
it, it took almost an hour to set it up. It was hard to tell if
it worked at first, because just as we finished setting it up,
the winds calmed and the whole anchorage seemed flatter.
However, starting about 3:00 a.m. the boat was rocking and
rolling like crazy – so we are still not sure if the silly thing
works at all. We will have to try again another time.

Today, Sunday, we got up very early ( since we were up early
with all the rolling in the anchorage), and by 7:00 a.m. were
headed south for the island of Bequia which is part of St.
Vincent and the Grenadines. Our sail took us past the Pitons
which were magnificent from each new angle we saw them, and then
past the beautiful, rugged island of St. Vincent. After a
beautiful 8 hour sail we arrived in Bequia – exhausted as usual
by the heat and the sun. We said, wouldn’t it be nice if it
would just rain for the rest of they day – and guess what? It
did. We assume it will all blow through tonight and be sunny and
warm again tomorrow.

Only one more day til Ricky and Leon arrive. Hooray !