07-Apr-2009 Noon Update

Up-Island Caribbean Crossing day #1
Noon Position 15'24.2N/62'12.6W

• 108nm last 24hrs
  
• 108nm from St. Lucia
  
• 195nm to St. Croix
  
• Winds E 10-15 Knots
  
• Seas NE 3-4ft
  
• 1414nm to Charleston SC
  

Sandpiper is back at sea eating up the miles northbound! Sunday night we had one last dinner at Jambe de Bois with Captain Chris from S/V Christa. Sitting next to us having dinner oddly enough was Chris Doyle, the man who wrote the guide book we were using the sail thru the Windward Islands. He was in town with his boat working on updates for his next edition of his guidebook that just about every boat in this area has aboard.

Early yesterday morning we upped anchor and motored from where we had been anchored off Pigeon Island and dropped the hook inside the tiny lagoon off Rodney Marina. After one last breakfast ashore with Cap'n Chris, clearing customs and immigration, spending our last EC dollars on groceries and a movie from a guy who sells bootlegs out of the back of his car, we were ready to head out.

Sadly we had to say good bye to Cap'n Chris who we have been good friends with for many years. But we were most fortunate that our schedules worked out so we could spend the time anchored together in Rodney Bay. Chris is southbound for hurricane season (Starts 01-June) stopping either in Grenada or Venezuela while we are northbound for Charleston, SC.

Once we cleared the harbor we had perfect winds right off the starboard quarter in a nice rare Caribbean easterly blasting the Piper along at 7 knots. We were estactic that we would be making this speed all the way to the U.S Virgin Islands. But once behind Martinique the winds dropped slowing us down to 2 knots. We were hoping with this leg to St Croix being more then 20 miles offshore the Windward Chain that the islands would not block the winds, but even this morning being 40 miles off Guadeloupe Island we were in the wind shadows, causing us to do a few hours of motoring.

One bummer is that the new part that Amy's mom brought us for the autopilot did not fix the problem. After about 12 hours it gave out, resulting in us having to hand steer when motoring. So while under sail we are using 'Haywire', our wind vane, to steer us along.

One exciting new development is that before we left St Lucia we called Sirius Radio and had our account reactivated after a 4 year freeze. We we are now just starting to back into their satellites footprint. Sirius and XM have merged, but Sirius' satellites have a larger footprint to the south and we are just on the edge. The last time we had a connection was 4 years ago when we were west bound across the Pacific from Mexico. Just another sign we are getting closer to home.

While in St. Lucia we updated our photos and videos so what are you waiting for, check em out!!

More in 24
Tom and Amy

Rodney Bay, St. Lucia

Anchored off Pigeon Island
Rodney Bay
St Lucia Island
Caribbean Sea
14’05.4N/60’57.8W
(Click On Photo To Enlarge)

• 100 feet from SV Christa
  
• 300 nm to St Croix, Virgin Islands
  
• 1521 nm to St Charles, SC USA
  

Busy. The one word Tom and I both used to describe our last week.

Our last entry reunited us with old friends Chris and Sam. Sam’s visit went by too quickly. He is a great boat guest who quickly regained his sea legs his first night at anchor with a very uncomfortable swell rolling into the anchorage. Chris on S/V Christa is still anchored off our stern and guaranteed to bring a smile to our faces at least once a day with his excitably active personality.

We added two more guests to the week with Mom Sherman and her boyfriend, Dr. Bob. Bob had planned this trip for a surprise B-day trip for Mom months back and it couldn’t have worked out better. We were able to leave the boat at anchor just minutes from their all inclusive resort, which we were fortunate enough to take full advantage of for the very low price of FREE. It was hard to tear ourselves away from all the activities…pool side bingo, Hobie cats, swim up bar, and several different restaurants to choose from. But we managed to escape one afternoon to tour the St.Lucian Distillery, Rhythm of Rum tour.  Read Tom’s rum report.

We also wanted to show Mom and Bob our favorite hangout on the island, ‘Jambe de Bois’. Jambe de Bois means ‘wooden leg’ and is named after the French pirate that used the island as a base for raiding passing Spanish ships in the 1550’s. The restaurant has a cozy cabin feel with good cheap eats, dingy dock, wifi and a friendly personal staff.

We also pulled into the Rodney Bay Marina for just one night this week where we filled up on water and a few provisions, charged all the gadgets, and purchased a few must needed items from the duty free chandlery. That night we were fortunate enough that Mom and Bob could come down to the boat and get a better look at what has been our home for the last years. Mom has been aboard 3 years ago in Mexico just before we left for our Pacific Crossing. But Bob had never had the pleasure of stepping aboard the famous ‘Piper. His response was a shake of the head with amazement and bewilderment and assured us that ‘he wouldn’t do it’.

Our time flew by with them but look forward to being closer to home soon when our visits will be more frequent. Thanks so much to the both of them for bringing us 22 pounds of loot and spoiling us all week. 

Our current plan is to check out of St.Lucia tomorrow, hoist anchor in the afternoon and make tracks for the United States Virgin Island of St. Croix where we hope to be able to visit the Cruzan Rum Factory. Then, a 40-mile jump up to St. John where we will have the pleasure of spending a week with Dad and Shannon Sherman.

Amy

St. Lucia Rum Report

This is the forth installation of the Rum Report. Updates will be given from islands in the Caribbean Sandpiper stops at that have distilleries.

During our stay in St Lucia ‘Team Sandpiper’, along with Cap’n Chris from S/V Christa, Mom Sherman, and Dr. Bob piled in a taxi-van and headed south to St. Lucia Distillers Limited. This distillery has been in business since 1972 and produces 30 different liquors. Sugar cane used to be grown in St. Lucia to supply the distillery until the sugar prices crashed and St. Lucia changed its agricultural base from sugar to bananas. Raw molasses is now imported from Guyana in South America in bulk where it is poured into open concrete tanks to ferment for a week. It is then piped into a large copper continuous distillation column where the alcohol is extracted. The ‘rum’ is then either bottled directly or aged in oak barrels. Like other distilleries around the Caribbean these oak barrels are imported from the U.S. because U.S. law only allows bourbon distilleries to use their barrels once.

The tour of St. Lucia Distilleries was interesting and the tasting room was just a long table where we were told to drink as much as we wanted from the 30 bottles laying around. Our cab driver seemed to drink out of all thirty bottles before jumping back in his van, stating he was ready to drive us back.

St. Lucia Distilleries makes all kinds of different liquors such as strong rums, blended rums, coffee and peanut flavored liquors, and a rotgut wine that is much like Mad Dog 20/20. The most popular white rum is know locally as Denros Strong Rum. Its one of the strongest rums in the islands at 160 proof! It’s good rum to use in a rum punch as one bottle lasts forever. The best selling rum they produce is Bounty Rum that is a blended rum and caramel in color. There top of the line rum is Admiral Rodney Extra Old Rum that is aged in oak barrels. This rum was a gold medal winner at Rum Expo 2001. This was not available at the tasting table, but we were able to snag a bottle from the gift shop before we departed.

St. Lucia Distillers is the only distillery on the island. But wondering around the town market in Castries, many of the venders sell their own home made Spice Rum. This Spice Rum is white over proof rum that is added to an old bottle that they fill with all kinds of different fruits, spices, barks, tree branches, and whatever else is laying around. They also sell the bottles empty with the spices in the bottle. So all you have to do is add your favorite rum when you get home. Many venders sell over proof white rum in used bottles. But we are a bit wary to try this rum as we have no idea what is really in these bottles.

 
Stay tuned for the next issue of the ‘Rum Report’!!!

---

Note From Ron: I've discovered that their Admiral Rodney Rum was named after British Navy Admiral George Rodney. He was based in St. Lucia and is best known for defeating the French Navy at the Battle of the Saintes in 1782 during the American Revolution. The French were supporting the American rebels against the British. This battle, which took place in this part of the Caribbean, was an effort by the British to push the French out of the Caribbean and keep islands like Jamaica from falling into French or Spanish hands.

Rodney Bay, St. Lucia

Anchored at Pigeon Island
Rodney Bay
St Lucia Island
Caribbean Sea
14'05.4N/60'57.8W

• 50ft from SV Christa!!!
  
• Mom Sherman & Dr. Bob arrive tonight!!!
  
• Sam from Utah aboard!!!
  

Let the reunions commence! We have finally met up with Captain Chris from S/V Christa! It has been nearly three years since our last round up in Mexico. Since then most of you know that Chris has retired from the Coast Guard and has been solo sailing on his Westsail 32. It was many years and many miles ago that Christa and Piper were side by side at the Presidio Yacht Club in San Francisco. But it feels just like yesterday.

Upon entering Rodney Bay we had radioed Chris to tell him we were in route. Chris met us half mile out in his dingy, our old dingy, with a long awaited familiar smile and warm welcome. It was just like old times and the boys instantly fell back into the old routine of hazing each other. The night continued with good food and lots of catching up.

The next day we headed in to check out town and Reduit Beach. I personally was disappointed in the beach scene. It is a steep beach and the water clarity is not that great. We kept our hand-held radio close to us all day in anticipation of hearing our friend Sam's voice. Sam is another long-time Coast Guard friend of Tom's who currently lives in Utah working as an aircraft mechanic for Sky West Airlines. Some of you may remember that Sam was our savoir in Turkey for getting us home first class style using his Delta buddy passes.

Just as we were about to loose Chris to an episode of A.D.D we heard Sam's voice calling out for Sandpiper. Another happy reunion with hugs all around and we were off back to the Piper to kick back and catch up.

Yesterday we moved the boats to our current anchor location just off Pigeon Island and the Jambe De Bois Café. Our plans for the next few days don't include too much, sun, swim, more catching up

Amy

Tom Note: We have had a lack of internet connection since being in Grenada and that and being with friends and family, we have not been able to get up to date on our postings. As soon as we can get a connection with good bandwidth we will get postings, photo's and videos up to date.

Marigot Bay, St Lucia

Anchored Marigot Bay
St Lucia Island
Caribbean Sea
13’58.0N/61'01.6W

• 85 miles from SV Christa!!!
  
• 6 days till Mom Sherman & Dr. Bob arrive!!!
  
• 1 day till Sam from Utah makes a guest arrival!!!
  

We left the friendly fishing village of Anse La Raye yesterday morning for the short 1.5 motor up to where we are currently anchored off the entrance to Marigot Bay. We had been looking forward to coming here as all the travel magazines have photos of this small bay and our guidebook states “Marigot Bay is a spectacular anchorage”. And other books state that this is the best anchorage in the Caribbean.

With high hopes we entered the channel to be greeted by the usual boat boys that lurk at every harbor entrance in this part of the Caribbean. They offer to tie you off to their mooring ball for $15.00 U.S. per night. Since being in the Windward Islands this is the usual scam for arriving charter boats.  They assume that they must take a mooring and fork out the cash. But everywhere we have been there has been plenty of room to anchor for free. We feel more secure using our own anchor as we have no idea what the mooring ball is connected to. And there is a good chance that our own ground tackle is stronger then what is under the mooring ball.

I am sure in years past that being anchored in Marigot Bay was a highlight of one's travels through the Windward Islands. But much has changed. Boats are no longer allowed to anchor in the small bay and now must pay for a mooring buoy. There are so many mooring balls stuffed in the harbor that there is nowhere to anchor. Charter boats that are based out of here and large yachts take up most the moorings in the harbor. The only place to anchor is right were we are located, just outside the channel entrance to the north where holding is poor.

There are several resorts inside the bay that we explored. And being resorts, they make prices for everything quite steep. From our short stop here this seems like a place that cruisers do not visit. As I am typing this out we are the only cruising boat here. All of the others are charters and mega yachts. I think this has to do with all the mooring balls and a lack of secure space to anchor. Also, the only facilities ashore belong to the resorts, with the exception of a couple restaurants.

We did make it over to the north side of the bay to Doolittle’s restaurant, hotel, and bar for happy hour and had a few drinks with English owner Dave who has owned the business for the last 15 years. He was one of the first businesses in the bay and has seen it go from an idyllic setting to the overbuilt, mooring ball infested bay that it has become. He was looking forward to the sale of his business very soon so he can take delivery of a brand new sailboat that he was planning on sailing around the world.

For all the hype about Marigot Bay, I give it a big ‘thumbs down’ unless you have lots of cash and are on a charter boat. Amy gives it a middle thumb because it is so picturesque.

Plans are to move up the coast about 12 miles to St Lucia’s main shipping port of Castries where we plan to get some grocery shopping done before we proceed up to Rodney Bay to meet up with Capn’ Chris of the S/V Christa. Friend Sam from Utah got held up and should be arriving in the next couple of days.

More when up island,
Tom and Amy

Note From Ron: The restaurant "Doolittle's" is named after the the 1967 film "Dr. Dolittle" starring Rex Harrison. They filmed the giant pink snail on the beach scene at Marigot Bay. But I'm not sure why the restaurant name is spelled with two O's instead of one. The official name only has one.

Anse La Raye, St Lucia

Anchored off Anse Cochon
St Lucia Island
Caribbean Sea
13’56.4N/61'02.7W

• 85 miles from SV Christa!!!
  
• 7 days till Mom Sherman & Dr. Bob arrive!!!
  
• 1 day till Sam from Utah makes a guest arrival!!!
  

We left Soufriere yesterday morning and made the short 6 mile motor up the leeward coast of St Lucia and dropped the hook in a small bay off the even smaller fishing village Anse La Raye. We had read that there was a street party and fish fry every Friday so we decided we must attend. There was only one bit of drama on this passage when one of my flip-flops flew over the side and we had to make a recovery.

St Lucia’s leeward coast is all a marine sanctuary and they have set up mooring buoys all down the coast. The down side to this is that it is quite expensive when saying more then one day. Because of this we look for the limited areas where anchoring is allowed such as this small bay that has a nice sandy bottom.

We paddled ashore at sunset and the party was setting up all along the main street on the waterfront. The town of Anse La Raye is only a couple streets with many small houses all crammed together. Many of the houses are just boards and tin roofs. On the beach were several large backhoes that had been digging large holes with small Japanese men in white hard hats scurrying about. Turns out that Japan has donated 15 million dollars and engineers to rebuild the waterfront for the fishermen. They will have a new jetty and places to store their boats along with a market to sell their fish.

It all looks nice of Japan to do this, but then comes what they want in return. They want St Lucia’s vote in the U.N. so they can resume whaling, and they want access to St Lucia’s fisheries. It is nice that Japan wants to help the fishermen here. But it makes no sense for St Lucia allows Japan to fish their waters because there will be no fish left for the fishermen to bring back to their new waterfront facility.

There were tables all along the street with ladies cooking all different kinds of seafood in open barrels full of burning charcoal. Also every table had many bottles of different liquors and beers where you can buy a drink and walk around. We quickly discovered that the beer prices were double what they should normally be, so we popped our head into a small store that sold just about everything. It too was a small bar with a large TV showing American Wrestling. The 88-year-old owner who claims to have 15 children. He told us he loves watching wrestling, and he  sold us the cheapest beers we have had in the Caribbean, making his store our new favorite spot.

Bus loads of tourists arrive early, eat all they can, then are out of town by 9pm leaving us with all the locals drinking beer in the streets At each end of the main street are DJ’s spinning tunes out of a massive stacks of speakers. They compete to see which end of the street people favor the most. Our favorite Rasta DJ, Richard, aka ‘Sharkin’, on the south end of the street was quite pleased when Amy starting requesting some popular island dance hall songs we hear on the radio. He didn’t have one of the songs requested then a local walking by said he had the song on his cell phone. So he hooked his phone to the speakers and had the whole street dancing. 

Sharkin told us his boss wanted him to play country music figuring it would draw the tourists down to his end of the street. But picturing this Rasta Man spinning out country songs seemed a bit bizarre to us and we told him if he started playing country music we would go hang out with his competitor down the street.

My favorite spot was in town a bit where a lady had a karaoke machine set up on the sidewalk. It was quite exciting watching the inebriated local men belting out Elton John and Laura Branigan hits at the top of their lungs while dancing around.

We are very glad we made the decision to come to Anse La Raye and we were the only boat in the anchorage, which is quite rare in the Caribbean. This gets our vote as a ‘very cool town’ and is one of the rare towns where there are only islanders living here. Everyone is very friendly and all wave hello as we walked around. If you are in St. Lucia on a Friday night, make sure you stop by!

  

Current plans are to motor up the coast 1.5 miles to Marigot Bay where we will be spending the weekend waiting for the arrival of friend Sam who is flying in for the week from Utah.  Then we head up to Rodney Bay to meet up with Cap’ Chris on S/V Christa.

More later from the next bay,
Tom and Amy

Note from Amy:
Sharkin introduced us to a few new artists, my new favorite being ‘Busy Signal’ from Jamaica. Check him out

Port of Soufriere, St. Lucia Island

Anchored off Hummingbird Resort
Port of Soufriere
St Lucia Island
Caribbean Sea
13’51.4N/61'03.7W

• 90 miles from SV Christa!!!
  
• 9 days till Mom Sherman & Dr. Bob arrive!!!
  
• 2 days till Sam from Utah makes a guest arrival!!!
  

We made it! And better yet, we did not break anything!!!!

Tuesday morning we got the boat squared away and made one last Skype phone call to my Mom to sing Happy Birthday.

In case you have not heard or do not remember, our autopilot took a dump when crossing the Atlantic. We thought we had it fixed but she just was not working 100%. We had a Raymarine technician come to the boat when we were hauled out and needless to say he was of little help. It is very frustrating when we ask for help and they do not listen to what all we have done, and they continue to do all the same things and just repeat to us what we already know. It is a waste of time. We ended up ordering the part directly thru Raymarine and my Mom will be bringing it next week.

Anyways, we were quite pleased when turning the corner of south Grenada, we were able to shut down the engine, hook up the wind vane, and not hand steer. The last time we pointed the boat north was when we were leaving the Suez Canal 9 months ago. Around 2:30am the winds shifted, so the engine came on and we were hand steering. With the wind on our nose, even though they were predicted it to be coming from the east, we were slow going, averaging 3.5 knots most of the trip. We pulled into Soufriere Bay just before sunset where two boat boys exclaiming "Welcome to Paradise!" greeted us.

Soufriere is a small town between the towering twin Pitons, a landmark so prominent it is on the country's flag. The boat boys guided us in and helped us tie our stern line to a coconut tree ashore, for a small fee, where we are currently anchored. This area of St. Lucia is part of the Marine Management or SMMA. It is patrolled by park rangers whom collect a small fee and regulate all anchoring, moorings, diving and fishing.

I think our current location in front of the Hummingbird Resort is better than some of the moorings as we have a spectacular view of Petit Piton. Waking this morning to the sound of singing birds, roosters crowing, and the fresh smell of lush surroundings more than makes up for the unpleasant trip here.

Our plans today include a trip to the customs and immigration offices to check in and then explore the flora and fauna that surrounds us.

One Love,
Amy and Tom