St Lucia – Our Last stop

As we headed further south, and a little west, the sailing and weather continued to improve. The trade winds and waves were no longer on the nose and we had a nice beam reach to St Lucia.

After arriving in Rodney Bay, we motored into the lagoon to check it out but decided it would be nicer to anchor out in the bay. We found a nice spot just south of the Sandals mega-resort, surrounded by beautiful beaches.

As with most bays down here, Rodney Bay has a large fort at the entrance on Pigeon Island. This was the primary navel base for the British fleet in the late 1800’s and is a large complex with great views all the way to Martinique. We toured the national park and the fort building to find a great little restaurant/bar (the Captain’s Cellar) to sit out the rain squall.

While on our way back to the dinghy we came across a large group of locals fishing in the bay. They had just hauled in an actual boat load of fish (the boat was full to the gunwales with fishtrying to jump out of the boat) and had caught a few eagle rays in the nets.

We met up with Linda and Al from Cambio and rented a car to tour the island by land. Our first stop was the local rum distillery where we arranged a rum tasting. This was not the normal tasting as they just left us alone with over 15 open bottles of rum. Well, since it was before noon we exercised some restraint and only tasted about 10 but bought a couple bottles for later.

After the rum we drove down to the town of Soufriere and to see the spectacular Pitons.

The weather was not cooperating again, so we sent a few extra days hanging around Rodney Bay before heading south. We were rewarded with green flash sunsets for a number of evenings.

Our next stop was Marigot, a beautiful well-protected harbor. It is said that the British fleet hid from the French here, disguising their masts by tying coconut fronds in the rigging.

We spent the night in Marigot before heading south to see the Pitons from the water. The Pitons are the symbol of St. Lucia, two almost identical massive rock formations reaching over 2,400 feet high from the water. They are covered in lush green foliage and are truly impressive as you look up at them from the water level. We moored between the them in a small bay that was very, very rolly. .

When we decided to take Berkeley East back to the US for the summer, we had planned on St. Lucia as our turnaround point, but with favorable winds we changed the plan, extended our trip south and headed to Bequia (in the Grenadines).