I sailed into Rodney Bay, in the north part of St Lucia, at lunch time on Friday after hammering out a 40-mile sail from the north part of Martinique. The first this I said when I rounded Pigeon Island and saw the bay was WOW! Spread before me as a mile wide, beach lined bay where the water was calm, the wind kept it cool, and lots of action on the water and ashore.
I could have anchored anywhere along the beach, but I chose to go into the lagoon, which has a channel carved through the beach in the middle of the Bay, so I could check in before overtime fees started at 4:15pm (40 USD after this time, weekends, and holidays). I also had a friend joining me on Sunday and I was hoping to get wifi on the boat, so I wanted to be close to the marina. The dockage was cheap at 60 USD a night, but I chose the mooring field at 19 USD.
I really only planned to be here for two nights as I waited for Steve to arrive. My plan was to check in, work on the boat a little, and look around the marina on Friday. Saturday, I spent writing and loading blogs (along with a haircut that was in desperate need) and Sunday he was supposed to fly in around 1pm. Well it turns out his flight was delayed, it took time to go through customs, and it is over an hour drive from the airport, so he did not arrive until close to 5pm and Sunday was shot. After we had a light dinner ashore I took him out to the boat and since it was dark by this time I was able to show him some REALLY impressive bioluminescent in the water. It was lighting up so well it looked like there was a light under the dinghy as we motored through the lagoon.
We planned to leave on Monday but ended up relaxing in the super calm water of the lagoon. We did make it a shore in the afternoon to check out the town of Rodney Bay (take the dinghy the opposite direction from the marina and there is a dinghy dock that pops you right out into town) and grab provisions (in the mall across the street from the dinghy dock). Before we did that, we chose to walk down Reduit Beach running along the side of town. It is a beautiful beach lined with hotels, but we enjoyed the local part of the beach most (southern end) and had lunch at Maria’s Rum Shack. The tuna was fantastic, the plantains sweet, and the plate was overflowing. As we sat in paradise we simply said “cheers”. Once we got back to the boat he helped me pull up a hatch to reseal it and the job went perfect. What a great day.
We finally got the motivation to move the boat after spending the morning at the marina for wifi, the bank, marine store (almost got everything I needed haha), and fuel. We headed back into the bay and he was excited to get the boat moving as we traveled a whopping mile, haha. We anchored off Pigeon Island which is a national park and a fantastic hiking spot. In fact, we loved it so much we spent all afternoon there and ended up spending the night, but I will tell you more about it next time.
This is the causeway between Rodney Bay and Pigeon Island, which I will write about on Tuesday
