Sailing Log of a Mahe 36: Rodney Bay, St. Lucia

I went to the dingy dock without shoes and watch, naively expecting the Diginav owner to meet me as planned at 8.30am, I had arrived early ready. After about 12 other dingies had come in and out I asked one for the time, it was 8.55 and still no sign. So, I went up the steps opposite to the shop in bare feet to see where he’d got to. When I entered the shop he said, so you are ready? I said yes, I’d been waiting on the dock where we said, he shrugged his shoulders and indicated the two customers who’d just left the shop, no apology. I then waited another 15 minutes while he gathered tools and took the replacement parts out of packaging and answered the phone half a dozen times. We then left the shop where I was gingerly walking on the wet tiles in my bare feet carrying the equipment, as we reached the top of the stairs he joked that if I was to fall I should not damage the equipment, but frankly I wasn’t really in the mood by now for his humour.

We got the boat and he replaced the equipment, whilst telling us how to anchor a boat, drive a tender, disembark passengers from a tender and various other pearls of wisdom. He cleared our 4600 mile ships log without warning or telling us, though I guess this was perhaps unavoidable, it would have therefore been easier to bear if there had been any appreciable improvement in the operation of the equipment. The maximum depth indication was still not working when we left and the other two faults being intermittent will take sometime to confirm. However, we were keen to get back to St. Lucia and meet a couple of ARC friends who were due in, so we headed off as soon as he’d done. We saw a couple of other ARC boats appearing over the horizon as we sailed south down the channel between Martinique and St Lucia, I gather that about 30 boats got in that day.

ARC Party in the park

Once we were anchored again in the bay, we headed into the marina to check our post and see the crews of Pikorua and Papillon. We only managed to get as far as Pikorua and were invited onboard for a drink and dinner before we all headed to the Friday ARC party that we’d attended the week before. It was great to see Barry, Marie-Jean and Jen and meet the rest of their crew. We had a great evening exchanging our crossing stories, though having lost their propeller and had three trips up the mast on the way across, one after only 3 hours, Pikorua’s tales were much more dramatic than ours. However, everyone was well and despite the water taxi crashing them into the dock when towing them in, they were all in good spirits and we enjoyed joining their celebrations.