Friday, December 19
Miles: 20.0nm

We asked Chris Parker when the best time would be to go north to St Lucia and Martinique. His response was that today would be very light but tomorrow would be ESE at 14 and a nice day to go north. Lorraine and I decided that today would be the perfect day to go the 20 miles to Chateaubelair on St Vincent’s west coast. This would let us go the 50 miles to Rodney Bay tomorrow. We talked with Rick and Peggy and they decided to go the 70 miles tomorrow. We got the dinghy ready and motor sailed out of Admiralty Bay with little wind. Once we set a course for St Vincent, the wind filled in and we were sailing in a short time. The wind was 10 to 13 at an apparent wind angle of 60 degrees to start but clocked to 90 as we got closer to the big island. This was a grand sail as the speed was 6 to 7kts until the wind dropped. At 11:21 the wind speed dropped to zero so in came the jib and on with the motor. We then motor sailed the rest of the way to the harbor. We turned into the harbor, took down the main sail and motored toward the beach and a cat already at anchor. The depth went from 200+ to 30 fast. We anchored about 300 feet off the beach in 20 foot of water. We had lunch then got the dinghy ready. We motored over to a concrete dock and a guy on it was making frantic motions that Lorraine and I recognized were directed at me to avoid driving over dock lines and to a safe Chanel to the dock. Once we got there two guys helped us dock. One stayed with the dingy and the other, Keith Brown, led us to Customs and then the police station where Immigration is. After we checked out we went to a little grocery store and got some supplies. Here is Changes at anchor in this harbor.

We walked back to the dinghy and I gave the two helpers $10EC each. We went back to Changes and stripped the dinghy and put her on deck. Afterwards I was hot hot and sat still and drank a cold diet coco cola. It was good but not are as good as a cold beer would have been.

We met George on his Orange Kayak who said that he would keep watch over the boat at night. Andy on Seaquell had told us about him so we felt comfortable giving him $10EC to do,this and help pay for medical expenses for a younger brother with a hole in his heart. They are close to having enough money to have his brother flown to Trinidad for medical care. There was another sailboat anchored far away, and George convinced him to anchor close by so he could watch his boat too along with a catamaran. Lorraine cooked the sail fish and pumpkin for supper. The fish was excellent! Lorraine’s wishes that her pumpkin tasted closer to what we had on out tour at the rum distillery.

We have good free wifi here that our BadBoy picks up so we are catching up on our blog posts.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Rodney Bay, St. Lucia early. Tonight we enjoyed the Christmas lights lit up across the road and the karaoke singers young and old we can hear across the bar. We also saw and heard carolers singing Holy Night and carrying lights as they were walking down the main street which was a real treat. We don’t see this at home.

Phil