Play Day in Marigot Bay

This a beautiful place.  Marigot Bay, which we have not anchored in before, is a deep inlet on the west coast of St. Lucia about midway along the coastline.  

For thirty some years, up until January of this year, it was the base for the Moorings charter fleet.  The Moorings has now moved to Rodney Bay up at the north end of the island, and Marigot Bay is trying to remake itself as a destination.  

With the crowd of Moorings boats no long clogging the harbor, Marigot Bay has become an inviting stopover.  The marina has a pleasant restaurant, where last night we had rum punch and roti and from where tonight Don and Tom are collecting a 4-cheese pizza to go with our healthy salad, and they are hoping with the stern-to docks encircling the mangrove-lined shore to attract power yachts and mega yachts.  

There's a nice mooring field, where Quantum Leap now sits plumb in the middle of things, where we catch a steady breeze through a notch in the mountains.

I cannot tell you how well we slept our first night aboard.  Yes, it is a flat anchorage, and yes, we'd been up since 3am and had had a full travel day, and yes we'd had a few Piton beers and rum punches to celebrate our arrival, BUT all that aside, the is nothing like sleeping on a boat with the night breeze coming through a hatch an arm's reach over your body.

Tom and Bette had reminded us before we came  that it was hot here, but in fact it is less hot than back home in Florida!  Plus the breeze is at least 15 knots.  The temperature range is about 78-85 daily!

The sun is up before 6am..... but we weren't. We lingered in bed awhile, before getting up for coffee around 7am.  The steep hillsides encircling the narrow bay are packed with handsome vacation homes, condos and hotels, with bouganvillea and the odd early flamboyant tree providing splashes of bright color.  The rest of the hillsides are still relatively dry and leafless, the dry season not quite yet over. Although dark gray clouds roll through every few hours, so far none of them have let loose any real rain, just a few mists that struggle to rustle up weak rainbows.

Tom called for a play day.  He may have said lay day, but Tom is proud of his toys, so after a divine Sunday breakfast of cheesy eggs, sautéed sweet plantains, and chunks of fresh baguette picked up from shore, we launched the windsurfer and paddle board and loaded up snorkel gear before puttering the 100 yards or so to the palm dotted spit of beach behind us.  

The breeze was too stiff for us novices to attempt the windsurfer, so Tom dominated that activity, but the rest of us took turns getting our sea legs on the paddle board.  (Sorry all the pix of water play were by Don on his new Go Pro....which we haven't figured out how to add to the blog!

Later Don and I took the dinghy out to the point and wetted our snorkel gear in salt water for the first time since we were last aboard in Indonesia, and did my best to work off the punches and baguette by swimming half way back!

We returned to the beach where local kids were doing cartwheels into the water, and the tourists were frying in beach chairs, to find Tom and Bette over at Doolittle's enjoying a piña colada.  well, you gotta patronize the keepers of the beach, right!?  We stayed for lunch -- I enjoyed a Caesar salad with blue marlin -- and then came home and napped!  Napping is right up there with sleeping!

Tomorrow, the plan is to sail up to Rodney Bay where Tom hopes to get a sailmaker's opinion on his new gib -- well, it was new two-months ago when they left South Africa to cross the Atlantic!  He's not happy with the cut of it, but it's hard to persuasive with sailmakers thousands of mikes behind you.  from Rodney Bay, the next stop with be Martinique!