St. VincentWe sailed away from Rodney Bay on the island of St. Lucia but didn't make Vieux Fort at the bottom of the island until after dark. For those following in our tracks; do not try this at night. We missed an unlit, unmarked gigantic pillar in the bay by almost 20'. We chose our next stop at what sounded like the lesser of evils; Chateaubelair. St. Vincent has a dark and dangerous reputation, but we didn't entirely understand the situation. The name Chateaubelair brings up images of grand estates in wine country or the French Riviera. This island is one of the most impoverished places we have ever stopped. The bays on either side are famous for pirates. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. We jumped off St. Lucia early on May 30, 2023 to cross the channel to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It was mostly the sailing we hope for; brisk, from a good direction with sun and puffy white clouds dancing overhead. Skipper wasn't thrilled. We had left the marina and his new friends; the resident cat population and worst of all; we were on a heel. It was a fairly short leap though and by 1pm we were in the lee of St. Vincent and looking for a place to drop the anchor by 2:00. We had eluded pirates, but it seemed we were to be visited by the Bad Luck Fairy and by 3:00, Dois was incapacitated. He was prepping the dinghy for a run to shore. He had perched the pump on the life raft for a better reach to add air before he dropped the dinghy down into the water. As he stomped on the pump it squirted off the raft like a pumpkin seed and down he went. He twisted his ankle and tore his Achilles tendon. But we wouldn't know that for another two weeks. Dois is nothing if not persistent. And he isn't like the rest of us; he feels no pain. Ok, he feels it and ignores it. Like I said, he's not like me. The next morning he launched the dinghy and we went to shore to check in. But no way was he ready to see a doctor. That would take a few more days of swelling and my constant, loving concern and the fact that his foot was not responding to his basic commands before he conceded and we headed (hobbled) to the local (harumph) hospital. Chateaubelair Hospital is at the top of a steep incline. Dois had to go up sideways. There was no other option, until the Ambulance came up behind us and honked at us. They were in a hurry, it was lunch time. We shuffled out of their way and fell in behind their exhaust. The hospital was as you see it below, no more, no less. Oh yea, it was less a doctor. There was only a nurse on duty and we waited while she did nothing. Eventually Dois took a seat and I waited in the only other chair witch was a stone bench outside. Still, no one acknowledged our presence. It was hot outside so I went back in to ask if we needed an appointment. The nurse rolled her eyes and rattled off something neither of us could understand. So I asked if we could see a doctor. There was no doctor today. So I asked if we could get an x-ray. She said no. And asked Dois what was the problem. Five minutes later we left, there would be no help here. We would have to go to the next Island. We waited until Dois' foot felt a bit better and set sail for Port Elizabeth on the island of Bequia. We arrived in Port Elizabeth on June 5th. Hurricane season had officially arrived on the 1st. We are pretty far south almost out of the hurricane belt and it was early in the season. But the Hospital here on Bequia was as bereft of doctors and x-ray machines as Chateaubelair was. They recommended we take a ferry to Kingstown on St. Vincent, so we did. It is bizarre to travel on a large boat AWAY from Ashika. My camera died on this trip but in the big picture (pun intended) it's just a thing. I'm hoping I can get it fixed. Dois got x-rays done and met with a doctor to help with diagnosis. Dois tore the tendon but did not sever it. Win. Nor did he suffer any fracture. Win Win. We have a hurricane coming our way. The weathermen verify how extremely unusual this is down here at this time of year. Apparently the extremely warm waters of climate change are to blame. But that doesn't help much. We were going to leave early this morning, but the hurricane picked up speed for an earlier arrival. Due to this and the volatility of the predicting sources, we decided to hunker down instead. If the Good Luck Fairies return, this is all a big nothing burger and will spin up north like the GFS (USA model) predicts. But all the rest of the models predict something like the following by ECMWF (European model). We think we're in an OK position. Send your Good Luck Fairies our way! PEAS
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Rodney Bay, St. LuciaWe had arrived in balmy weather in the warm turquoise waters of the tropics. The sing song lilt of the St. Lucian’s Caribbean accent intensified our happy state of being in the islands of the Lesser Antilles. But just as you cannot run away from your problems, you cannot sail away from them either and we arrived with a list. Dois dove into it fixing two bilge pumps, the windvane bearing, two hoses on the generator and the starter solenoid the hoses had leaked on plaguing our TransAtlantic crossing. We patched dinghy leaks and ordered a fuel pump for the outboard motor from Florida. The new/used mainsail we picked up in Sicily was a good downwind sail for the crossing but did not handle upwind sailing well, and the sail to Panama would be a lot of that. A sailmaker at the marina quoted a very reasonable price to fix our old main that was botched in Greece, but as the work and time went by, he increased the price steadily… until it had doubled. There was no way out, so we would pick up the sail in a week, our next payday. We would make good use of the time addressing a few more housekeeping issues. I know what you’re all thinking. When are you going to visit the waterfall or the ruins or the museum? I had this discussion with a taxi driver on the way back from a provisioning run recently. He wanted to be our island tour guide. We are not tourists, I said. The thing about traveling for us is almost every waking hour and most of our sheckles go into 1 of 2 pots; the boat (of which is a small city of parts to maintain) or the life forms (food, medical, dental, optical etc.). There is not much left over for tourism. However we are looking forward to some time in the water soon. I worked on re-vitalizing the manual bilge pump. Dois installed the fuel pump on the outboard. I packed away winter clothes, etc. Dois worked on the starter as well as installing a new keyed ignition. The day arrived where we could get our sail out of hock. We had moved into the marina for a few days to work on the starter and we were anxious to move out of the confines of a marina and move down the Antilles island chain. We provisioned up again and were ready to leave the next morning. 8am we turned the key to start up the engine….errrrttt… that did not go well. The starter engaged the engine and then would not disengage. It whirred a horrendous noise and as long as the engine gets turned over, it feeds itself fuel and runs. The kill switch wouldn’t kill it, removing the fuse to the battery starter did nothing and the engine room started filling up with smoke. Dois grabbed a pillow and popped it over the air intake of the engine. Thwuup. That was the sound of the air intake sucking up the pillow. We are not sure if the starter burned up first or the engine died first (due to lack of air from pillow suffocation) but finally the crisis was limited to damage done and after it all; a burned-up starter. Our 40-yr-old-around-the-world-Perkins-tractor-engine survived again. It turned out the starter was rebuildable at a local automotive shop at a surprisingly reasonable cost; our very last dollars. We had come into the marina to work on the starter and now we were stuck there at a daily rate that was difficult to swallow and two weeks left until the next pay day. There we were; in paradise in a luxury marina for two weeks. We only lacked two things: a pool and money. We had plenty of Ashika jobs to keep us entertained. We had to re-sew the track slides on the repaired mainsail before installing on the mast. Then install batons and reefing lines. I made and installed rain deflectors on the cabin port-lights while Dois installed a new fuel pump on the dinghy outboard and changed its oil. It’s amazing how much junk we save because it may come in handy in a crisis. We cleaned and organized while justifying keeping the majority of the junk and watched YouTube News and Netflix shows on the Marina Wi-Fi. Again, finally, we got paid, took care of our marina bill and went to the market to re-provision. We are in the anchorage in St. Lucia as I write this, Dois has dinghied in to the Customs office to check out of this country. When he returns we’ll (hopefully… you just never know) pull the anchor and sail down to the southern end of this island to spend the night. Then leave for St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Woohoo! PeaCe
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Dois Brock and Lauri Hamilton Brock splashed our boat Ashika into the Pacific April 2017 for a Round the World Tour.
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