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| Rodney Bay, St. Lucia as seen from Pigeon Island |
St. Lucia is a beautiful island, and we’d been looking forward to a visit for some time – it wasn’t just because there was a certified Spectra Watermaker vendor there to deal with our annoying water leak. The reason we were looking forward to it? We knew someone there. When visiting a strange country as a tourist knowing someone, even if not well, is huge. When we come to many of these islands it’s pretty obvious we’re not local. Besides being white (where the overwhelming majority of islanders are not), by our dress, way of talking, modes of transportation, and being on a boat its obvious from a mile away we’re visitors. People don’t invite strangers into their homes, or might not want to give them a real view of what life is like.
Back in the States before she left her practice we learned that one of the medical assistants in her office was from St. Lucia. Wendy brought her mother, Marie, in to see Kathy when she was in town and when they discussed that we were to be in the islands in the future Marie gave Kathy her number and told us to look her up. Kathy warned her we’d take her up on it!
When we arrived on St. Lucia we gave Marie and her husband Robert a call and they met us at the marina with hugs and fresh fruit from their backyard. We chatted and made plans to come to their house for lunch and they introduced us to Chris, whose taxi they insisted should be at our disposal during our stay in St. Lucia. Those of you that have been following along know how rarely we use taxis since walking and buses are almost always available. What a treat!
While in St. Lucia we needed to sort out a leak in our water maker as well as a couple of other issues. Our 24V alternator on our engine had stopped charging, and I still hadn’t gotten around to sorting out the air conditioning since we arrived in November. We’ve rarely wished for it, but we were anticipating a couple of days in a marina here to get the water maker sorted and the only place where the A/C is beyond just “nice” is in a marina, since you don’t get the breezes you get at anchor.
Rodney Bay Marina is a nice, clean, well run and quite reasonably priced marina. Two East Caribbean dollars per foot worked out to about $40 U.S. per night for a slip. I’ve spent $65 for a mooring in Newport, RI and marina rates typically run from $2.00 to $4.00 or more per foot in many marinas ( $100-$200+ per night USD at our fifty-three feet) so this really got my inner cheapskate excited; even if it wasn’t actually free the internet access and showers were! We popped in and out of the marina over the coming weeks as we were getting our work done and enjoyed the long showers and Skype calls. We do even fewer marinas than we do taxis.
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| There are worse places to take the dinghy our for a spin! |
The anchorage outside in Rodney Bay is also a comfortable, easy anchorage. It’s a huge anchorage – even when it is “crowded” you have much more space there than in many other places. There is always a breeze from shore to cool the boat, the water is clear and it’s an easy dinghy ride into the inner harbor where stores, restaurants and services are a short walk from the town dinghy dock.
Pigeon Island
Pigeon Island is a bit of a misnomer, it used to be an island on Rodney Bay but a causeway was completed some time ago and the island is now connected to the mainland. Apparently it has been renamed “Pigeon Point” but apparently no one calls it that. A fort was placed on top of the island a few hundred years ago, and the whole island has been turned into a national park.
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| Will on the second peak on Pigeon Island |
The island has two peaks, the lower on has the bulk of the fort ruins on it. We all walked up to the fort and the views were stunning. The guns on the bluff commanded a full sweep of the entrance to Rodney Bay, and their rusted hulks were still in place. In the saddle between the peaks is a musket redoubt where infantry could cover approaches up the steep hillside from cover. It was here that the two less enthusiastic of us settled under the shade while Kathy and Will headed up to the second peak (I claim an excuse, while everyone was doing school in the morning I was cleaning the bottom of the boat – an exhausting task!).
The park is also home to Jambe de Bois, a lovely waterfront restaurant located on the beach facing Rodney Bay. This casual lunch was one of the more enjoyable meals we’ve had at a restaurant in the Caribbean. A beautiful setting, great food and drinks, and very reasonable prices – how can you go wrong? Our only regret was that we ran out of time to go back again.
Gros Islet
The village of Gros Islet is next to the channel into the inner harbor at Rodney Bay, and every Friday night the main street closes down for a street fair. We headed there our first Friday night and it was quite a nice time. Admittedly, sampling home brewed rum punches and dancing until dawn IS more of an adult venture, we headed there earlier with the kids and enjoyed some of the food, music, and sights. In hindsight we should have headed later without the kids, as it is more of an adult affair and our kids aren’t used to staying up super late – when we left around 9:30 or so things were just starting to swing. But it’s a lively, loud affair with local foods to sample, lots of music and dancing and certainly worth a visit.
Marigot
It seems that almost every island down here has a Marigot on it, somewhere. We’ve been to Marigot in St. Martin, Dominica, and St. Lucia and apparently there is one in St. Barth’s, a district in Martinique and also another in Haiti.
Marigot in St. Lucia is a small, pretty steep sided protected harbor. It’s a quiet place, with a marina and some restaurants and a beach club. It’s one of the places on St. Lucia that is geared towards the visiting yachtsman and it shows; it is a nice place to be.
When we dropped anchor we were greeted by a fruit vendor who called himself “Santa Claus” and wore a Santa hat. An easy way to get recognition, I suppose you can pick him out across the harbor with that hat. When he pulled up he immediately started peeling bananas and handing them out to us to try. When we told him we had enough mangoes, he said “Not like mine, these are from my yard you have to try them” and asked us to borrow a knife. Okay, a more ambitious sales approach than some of the guys with the samples and all…but holy cow, those were the Best Mangoes Ever. No kidding, we’d tried a variety of mangoes in a variety of places. Some we liked, some were too squishy or stringy…Santa Claus had the best variety mangoes we’d tried to date. We were tempted on our final sail South from Rodney Bay to swing into Marigot just to find Santa Claus and get some of his mangoes.
While anchored Danielle and I took a swim to one side of the harbor where there was some quite nice snorkeling. We’d planned another day in Marigot, but got the call that our water maker parts would be arriving in Customs shortly and we were needed to get them released so they could be installed.
New Friends
Some of the best times in St. Lucia were spent with our new friends Robert & Marie. They invited us to their home for lunch one Saturday. Robert picked us up at the marina with his adorable youngest granddaughter and brought us back to their house.
From the driveway the house doesn’t look so large. Pulling into the garage (where Robert has a collection of Parakeets), we came out into the front yard which is devoted to the family business. For quite some time Robert has sold building materials and housing trim and decor items cast from concrete. His business is very understated, he doesn’t even have a sign on the street, but he’s done very well. Raising and educating seven children (now all adults with good careers) with his own industry is an impressive accomplishment.
Inside it quickly became apparent what a unique structure their house was. Over the years Robert had expanded…and expanded…and expanded to accommodate his growing family. To the point where the house was up to seven bedrooms and full of a generation’s worth of furniture and family memories. A warm and inviting place to visit!
Neither Robert or Marie eat any meat, their diet is mostly fish and vegetables so we were a bit unsure what lunch would be. It turns out they’d prepared a many course meal of island specialties. Grilled fresh tuna, a salad with a conch compote, “Provision” – which is local root vegetables, lasagna made with conch and vegetables, lentils & beans, roasted breadfruit, fried plaintains…I tried everything and loved it all and was sad that in spite of my ability to eat stunning amounts of food when provoked I was unable to finish everything. Everyone ate well, even Will – who is notoriously skittish about strange fish and odd vegetables – finished his lasagna and tried and liked most everything.
After lunch we retired to the back yard where Marie gave us a tour of their wondrous garden. Mangoes, breadfruit, sour orange, bananas, plums – I can’t even remember how many different fruits and vegetables they had ready for the picking in the back yard. A beautiful place and lush with all sorts of local delights! Mango trees seem somewhat reminiscent of zucchini, in that anyone who has ever planted even a single zucchini plant knows they will be inundated with more zucchini than their entire extended family and all their friends could ever eat. It seems the same with these huge trees with hundreds of mangoes waiting to ripen – and Marie’s certainly give Santa’s a run for the money! We weren’t about to turn any down.
More plans were made, and the following Saturday we took Robert, Marie and several of their family members out for a sail. As we left the harbor Robert mentioned that he’d never seen the harbor from the water. Marie and her daughters and friends had made some shopping day trips to Martinique, but I guess Robert never joined them. It didn’t seem that anyone had really spent much time on a sail boat so we hoped to give them a good day out.
Living on a sailboat and sailing a lot you tend to take for granted what it is like, the feeling of pressing on sail and seeing things from the water. After all that’s how we see everything, all the time.
From what I could tell everyone had a nice time. With cooperative winds Evenstar certainly had a chance to kick up her heels and put on a lively show for our guests. As we headed South our guests started picking out highlights on land, and seeing friends houses and familiar places from a new angle. Marie quickly figured out that the chart plotter she was sitting in front of could give her a guided tour and the exact names of all the features and landmarks we were passing and she began calling out the highlights for Robert. A few phone calls were made of the “Hey, look out your window…can you see that boat we’re on!” variety. We saw schools of fish splashing and jumping at the surface while flocks of birds wheeled overhead, and a large sea turtle. There was much laughing and pointing. It was really a lot of fun to take some people out and show them a bit of our life that they’d rarely see and have them enjoy it with us.
Returning to the dock, we sat in the cockpit enjoying some crackers and cheese a few more cold Pitons as we chatted about the sail, just enjoying the company and making a few more memories.
New friends are harder to leave than any harbor or port!
