marigot bay, st. lucia

5/25/2017

Sunset from Doolittle's in Marigot Bay

On the morning of May 8, we left Martinique for St. Lucia. The first part of the trip was quite uncomfortable, with short period, steep, confused seas, and wave heights around 8 feet, with the occasional bigger one. At one point, Kendall, Eoin, and Brian were up at the helm and found themselves eye-level with the crest of a wave. It seemed more than 14 feet high. Fortunately it was the only one of its kind! The sea state caused some seasickness on board. Eoin threw up, Kendall was incapacitated on a cockpit bench for a couple of hours, and Marin felt slightly queasy. Isla was the only one who took Dramamine and she read comfortably for the entire trip. Brian, as usual, and very fortunately, was unaffected.

Once we were in the lee of St. Lucia, we experienced calm following seas and everyone got their sea legs back under them. By 1:30, we were on a mooring in Marigot Bay, St. Lucia. This would be our home for the next week or so; Brian was heading to North Carolina for Duke’s graduation weekend and we decided that Kendall and the kids would stay on the mooring while he was away.

The marina was part of a resort complex, and while we were at our mooring, we had use of the resort’s pools. It isn’t always nice to swim in a marina and we were happy to have access to the pools because it was still and hot during our visit. The bay is very sheltered, and is known to be a hurricane hole. Hurricane holes are definitely sheltered, usually at the cost of air flow, and they become hot, still, and often buggy. In addition to the resort, the bay was surrounded by restaurants, all of them good, and all with good views. Brian and Kendall were able to satisfy their love of Indian food (on multiple occasions!) at Masala Bay and splurged on a date night at the Rainforest Hideaway.

We were also able to catch up with our good friends, Nancy and Curt from SV Rum Tum Tiger (Leopard 40) while in St. Lucia. We first met them on New Providence in The Bahamas back in December, then saw them again briefly in Turks and Caicos where we compared plans for our upcoming passages to Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, we spent some time catching up at the Marina Pescaderia in Puerto Real. After Counting Stars left Puerto Real, we often exchanged emails with the Rum Tum Tiger crew, keeping up with each other’s location and progress. We are planning to haul out at the same yard in Grenada in June and knew we’d see each other then, but hoped to catch up sooner, and we were very happy to see them in St. Lucia.

After Brian returned from Durham, we moved to the dock for fuel, and stayed there overnight so we could plug in and equalize our batteries. Our next stop would be Bequia in St. Vincent and we were looking forward to seeing the famous Pitons along the way down the St. Lucia coast.