19th – 22rd Feb Mardi Gras break to Martinique

Its Sunday PM 19th Feb at St Lucia and MB is feeling a bit rough (Sinus infection and flu-like symptoms). Having been plodding away on boaty type maintenance and repair jobs for a couple of weeks its time for a welcome break in the form of a kind offer to sail northwards as mate on Rustler 36 ‘Annie’ from St Lucia bound for Martinique. Annie is another ARC Crossing yacht and is owned by her skipper, Graham Gibson from Porthscatho in Cornwall.  Our mission is to see at least a little something of the Mardi Gras type events that take place throughout the Caribbean and Latin America (but not widely observed in commonwealth countries such as St Lucia). We don’t have time to get up to the big parades at Fort de France, the northern capital of Martinique so we first make for the small village of St Anne on the south coast. We motor sail 25 miles mostly upwind to get to the anchorage before dark. Ashore to pleasant and colourful village for a beer and back to boat by torchlight.

AM  Monday, up anchor and make our way across the large bay avoiding the vast reefs, past Club Med into the inner part of Marin Bay. In the distance, yacht hulls sit forlornly on the reefs, witness to previous shattered dreams.  The anchorage area is very crowded with world girdling yachts and charter fleets. Almost every nationality is represented.

Ashore on Monday, we find the town totally involved in the day’s lively processions and celebrations. These are VERY loud and colourful. Much drumming. Large trucks with enormous ghetto Blasters. Outlandish overdressing mixes with alarmingly miniscule underdressing in great waves of dancers and marchers.  

Tuesday is Carrefour french shopping day, followed by quiet stroll around town looking for more processions and fetes. It should be red devil procession day, and eventually we find one....but its very feeble compared to yesterday’s festivities. Return onboard for MB to produce a Caribbean Beef curry.

Weds AM and we are awoken early at 0500 by party noise ashore. This is early morning pyjama procession day, and we can hear the truck based ghetto blasters at full volume 3 miles out.  We blearily drag ourselves ashore to Marin for clearance, chandlers, and coffee. This is also a busy day for the big ‘Black and White’ skeleton procession which we will have no time to see as we need to depart southwards after lunch. The wind and sea are building rapidly, and we have a very boistrous sail under genoa only, with dinghy stowed on foredeck. From about halfway across the straits to St Lucia, the sea is very lively with large breakers and a big swell.  We take several breakers on board and arrive wet and bedraggled at St Lucia just before dark after a worthwhile break away from our ‘boat joblists’ in the marina .

Happen to notice a Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship in the bay when we returned this PM. Its St Lucia's independence day and the ship is paying a courtesy visit. Staying onboard are HRH Prince Edward and his missus Sophie. They later come ashore to the marina to chat pleasantly to all and sundry en route to see the island's governor general.

(I'll try and get some photos of parades etc on as soon as I can find some decent wi-fi/broadband)

MB

Weds 15th Feb - St Lucia Island tour

Details and photos later.
Hire car trip around island to view rail forests, bays, cliffs, and villages.

Kind of intermediate update thingy

Just to keep youse all in the picture.

Still living on boat here in Rodney Bay. I've now become one of those sad inmates you see skulking around marinas looking for scraps in skips and making awnings out of used bin bags. My hair is long and weedy and I sport rasta beads at both neck and wrist. I'm at knuckle-touching (='respect man'!) levels of familiarity with every other hairy shyster that geezers his way around this port, and there's quite a few of them I can tell you.

There's a totally naked and very black man who sits outside the local hardware shop gazing blankly into the future. He dribbles and mutters noiselessly shaking his head. He was quite a good plasterer and then 'something happened' they say. I can tell you he's now my best mate. Thats how long I've been here.

I do jobs on t'boat like splicing stuff and sorting ropes, and ferreting in the bilges for things that don't work. Today I counted all the ropes out and then counted them all back in again. The dinghy has to be pumped out every 5 minutes AND I have to talk and be nice to passing Germans......and even worse, passing Canadians, I ask you, of whom there are many.
Also I have to make lists of jobs, Lots and lots of lists. And then I have to prioritise the jobs, or at least the lists anyway.

There's a man that comes past every morning in a gaily painted sort of rafty dugouty type of thing covered in dirty flags of all nations. He shouts, bellows even, and uses a WW2 air hooter to announce his presence. His job is to flog you FROOT. He has a pile of last weeks supermarket cast off mungos or wangos or whatever kind of flipperty jibbet green mouldy roundy shapes that tourists are meant to haggle for. I still don't know the difference between a mango and a pineapple, well not his ones anyway because his stuff all looks the same.

On Saturday, a Rasta man with green and red shoes (that is one of each), a frequent enjoyer of ganga inhalation, and with many dreads, persuaded me to part with many Obama dollars in return for smearing my boat lavishly with car polish. I suppose the boat now looks more interesting so I paid him anyway. I noted in passing that he had a curious singing voice, somewhat higher than those of the well known Gibbs brothers.  

Yesterday being Sunday I took a day off and proceeded by rubber dubby to the nearby settlement where there is a little sailing club. A good lunch and several beers later saw me, rather uncharacteristically on the beach, in company with other persons who may or may not have been inebriated. One elderly skinny lady, probably american, stood in the sea holding a cocktail shaker full of rum high above the waves and talking gibberish non-stop all afternoon. The only break she took was when seeing that I and my nearest neighbour, lying peacefully in the sand,  were in danger of roasting under the sun she rushed to our aid, and before we had time to react, had covered our heads and faces liberally from a tub of what may well have been Duckhams waterproof seacock grease.  
A check in the washroom mirror confirmed that we now looked like Zombie extras from a Michael Jackson movie. The stuff was impossible to remove so we proceeded into town anyway for some more cocktails...in a Nepalese Bar....... with some Germans.

This morning I had a headache, so work on the lists was very slow indeed.

Tomorrow a lady is coming to do my insides for me. She asked me to buy some 'Old English Oil' for her. I can't wait.

Off in a hired 4X4 on Wednesday to find some walking trails in the rain forest and look at parrots bottoms. Not much other wildlife here apart from rats at the water edge and geezers in the marina. Also mozzies. Have to sleep with one Citronella Candle at night. Nice girl. Local.

MB

On  a more serious note, the Felicity J crew and owners have asked me to skipper again, this time from Panama to Australia, but sadly I think I'm about to decline because it would be very difficult to go away for so long while leaving RAPAREE in the Caribbean. Its a great sadness to miss such opportunities, but there would also be the problem of getting back to Raparee and sailing her away from the area before the Hurricane season which starts in the summer. I would also have to consider how to get her back to UK. 

Finally, I have now managed to edit photos for the past few months and will try and get some onto this site asap, although broadband speed here is very slow.

Fil-in bit 29 Jan - 2 Feb

OK folks: quick update. When I get a minute I will do a diary blog on my time with Felicity J at Shelter Bay Marina at Panama. Also the great treat of doing a full Panama Canal transit to the Pacific as Bow line handler on one of the WorldArc yachts, MATILDA. After a flight back via Miami (where I had 36 hours to gape in awe at the wonders and excesses of the super rich) I'm now back in St Lucia and ready to prep Raparee for some more inter-island sailing.

26th – 27th Jan: The last Felicity J Night.

26th – 27th Jan

Fairly quiet night at sea (25th) watchkeeping through the night under genoa only. Much shipping. Being clear of the heavy weather ‘squeeze’ area around N Columbia and Venezuala, we shape a course closer to the Panamanian coastline, now just visible, and head for Panama Canal entrance bay.  Thurs 26th morning is busy dodging shipping and picking out rocks and buoys. Exciting entry through about 100 ships anchored in and around the bay awaiting orders. Shelter Bay marina is at the right of the entrance inside the breakwater and is part of the old US Fort Sherwin. Very narrow entrance between mangroves. Buzzards and Pelicans galore.  MB on radio to request berth, followed by a tight entrance to pontoon. Decide to do a swift backwards alongside in close quarters despite the crosswind and nearly screw it up. Thank God for quick reactions of marina staff on pontoon. Sighs of relief all round. Made it here at an average of about 6kts for the 1300 miles. Suddenly we are surrounded by welcoming antipodean types .........by coincidence, we’ve arived on Australia Day.  Felicity J being an Aussie boat, its time to dress overall before attacking a ‘Panama’ beer or 6 at the friendy restaurant bar’s Aust Day BBQ.