Anonymous
After 10 long days of working on Sampanena in Marin, we finally set sail South to St. Lucia. We were pretty stoked to be sailing on a good beam reach after weeks of bashing into wind and rain, at points the wind was even pushing on our stern… how we miss downwind cruising!
We decided to head off to Marigot Bay which is about half way down St. Lucia’s west coast. The entrance is hard to spot from out to sea, however following our trusty pilotage book, we turned in and the anchorage opened up. You can anchor in the outside of the main inlet on the Northern side of the marked channel or pick up a buoy in the inner harbour. A boat boy was quickly by our side, offering us a mooring buoy which we politely refused and then offering us help to anchor. The fact that we have now been to 90 + anchorages since leaving home wasn’t the point, but we decided to take up his offer to be polite and gave him a few beers for his help. Although he was generally very friendly, we found him a little bit forceful in his approach to things. Something we have heard a lot about from other cruisers when dealing with the St. Lucia boat boys.
Once we were anchored we were itching to jump in, check the anchor, and go for a snorkel. Just off the stern of our boat there was an awesome drop off to 20+ meters, it sure felt good to be in the water and free-diving again after so long stuck on the boat in Marin. After satisfying my free-diving needs I went to check on the anchor. It turns out the mud bottom that was promised to us by the boat boy was actually a mixture of dead coral and rock, this meant our anchor was not set properly which made us a littlereluctant to leave her to go and explore.
After much discussion and working out dates, we decided that we wanted to spend more time exploring the islands down south and as the holding was not good we have decided to get a few hours’ sleep before leaving early tomorrow morning to St. Vincent (around 3am).
We have read mixed reviews about St. Vincent… In the past they have had their fair share of armed robberies, meaning many cruisers are reluctant to drop anchor there, however with lush green mountains and some good free-diving spots we simply can’t miss it out.
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