Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Time to sail north

Since we're in the water again, we've done so many boat projects, that I can't even remember all of them. The sails are ready, almost everything in place, checked, cleaned and replaced if it was needed, so Heron is ready to sail again.

Last week we also had two laundry days, just before Rafael reached us. Actually, at the time it reachet St Lucia it was not named yet, it got the name and the status of tropical storm right after it went over us. Nothing bad happened, the wind gust barely reached 30 knots couple of times, which we had plenty of times in winter months last year - on Montserrat, in Deshaies in Guadeloupe, even in Jolly Harbour in Antigua. But Rafael also brought plenty of rain, we managed to fill out water tanks in half an hour. We were reading a lot and playing sudoku. And even in all that rain, Gregory was still delivering fruits and vegetables out to the boats, there was only one day he didn't come. Tough guy! 

It was very educational to observe the development of Rafael from so close, we were following weather reports couple of times per day and it was interesting to see, how accurate (or not) the reports were. We weren't frightened at any time, we felt we were able to flee - inner lagoon is so close, but we are still happy that Rafael developed to hurricane only after passing the Caribbean islands. But I wouldn't like to be on north-west Atlantic right now (if you like, check nhc.noaa.gov ).

Otherwise, nothing much happened, this boat came by one day and we thought it was funny - it's the boat for those forced to live at sea and sail a boat, but would much rather drive a car!


And here is the Unicorn aka Black Pearl again.


I was so glad the other day, when in all the rain that was coming down, I saw a turtle swimming near our boat. It was the first turtle in St Lucia! And with exception of Tobago Cays, which is a natural reserve, we've only seen one more in all the time we're south of Martinique. I'm so much looking forward to Leeward island (the islands north of Matrinique), with all the turtles!

And as it seems, we're sailing north tomorrow. We will sail directly to Guadeloupe with maybe one overnight stop at Martinique. Hope we'll have some good wind and nice weather.

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