Up at dawn, watched the sunrise over the St. Lucia for the first time on an Anchor. The amount of boats in the bay was 10x that had anchor lights on last night when we chose our anchor spot. Probably a hundred or so boats anchored out side of Rodney Bay, right in front of a Sandals resort.

Fired up the engines and rolled toward the marina, tried to hail the marina on the VHF but no luck, till we almost got all the way in. They put us next to a 70 foot ketch, with a slight cross wind, but we stuck the landing and with help from the dock hands tied up with out a scratch or loud words.

Clearing customs only took 1.5 hours, and boy that building must be built out of noodles cause it sure was moving all over the place, had to lean up against the wall to stand still. The sea legs kept wanting to twitch and catch my balance. Of course a trip to the market after customs is my MO to get a beer, sure it was 9am, but was necessary after that.

Next task was to organize the air fare and make sure eveyone could get out on time, and Christine worked her magic and found a flight out that afternoon for Marvin so that he could be home for is birthday on Friday.

The rest of the day was spent lounging and drinking in the sun and talking to other boaters and absolutely no talking about our trip. Lots of beers and drinks, with a cheeseburger in paradise at the local cafe.

We don’t have the correct plugs to plug in the electricity so that might be on the agenda today to get an adapter or shore cable for the USA type plugs everything we have is for 220/50 hz.

We are safely near land, Ron leaves on Friday, we are currently scheduled to leave on Monday. Since we were late getting here, the haul out date was missed and now they can’t get us out till some later date. So that might put a wrench in the plans.

Its beautiful here!

Ron and Matt took down the jib and worked on the larger projects as I worked on the interior of the boat.  I started by clearing out the unessential items stored on the starboard side of the boat, and kept it coming.  I was unloading it into the cockpit area when I saw a security guy walk by. I hailed him down and asked him what we should do with the “free items”.  He said, “I will take some of it”.  He was so sweet, he put a large pile on the corner of the boat and said put the rest in separate pile on the dock – which we did.  It took me all day to go through the starboard side and the public portions of the port side (including something like 27 sets of bedding, dozens of towels, Tupperware and more). We had random people stopping by to look at our stuff and select their new treasures- I gathered that this is not an unusual occurrence.

Tonight we went out to a nice dinner as it was Ron’s last night with us and we wanted to see what Ron did when he let his hair down J  We had a very expensive dinner at a Thai restaurant and it was not all that.  It was to expensive for 3 people and Ron and I only got 6 shrimps a piece.  But the drinks were good and strong and that was more important.

We arrived early in the morning and anchored out until the marina opened.  We were led to a slip next to a 70+ racing boat and Matt masterfully maneuvered our 25’ wide, 47’ long boat into the slip between another boat and the dock. I was so very proud!

Matt had to clear customs and immigration which took about 2 hours. We were not certain our paperwork from the Gran Canarias would work since they were not handled by us, but it was all we had.  I was so uneasy waiting for him to get back as I wanted to get everyone’s flights changed, get the haul out scheduled and just get off the boat. Of course nobody is supposed to leave the boat until the captain has returned with the clearance – so we waited.   As soon as I saw, him I jumped off the boat and headed straight for the marina office.  Of course I was unable to get the haul out scheduled; I didn’t get the slip taken care of or anything else done with regards to the boat as the office was swarmed with tons of people coming in from the ARC.  What a pain in the butt.  So, I grabbed my change and headed toward the pay phone to try to call American Airlines.  Well, guess what?  You cannot call the toll free number from a pay phone so I called the local number.  The local number cannot help you with flights and I was informed that the toll free number had to be called from a cell or land line (not a pay phone).  So as I was walking back to the boat, dejected I might add, I passed by a trailer for Digicel and I proceeded to get a local cell phone – something we have never done.  I was told that it is $.59 per minute for any call anywhere – not that bad, ha!  I ran into Ron while I was waiting for my phone and almost lost my composer, I was so frazzled.  By the time I got to the boat, saw Matt, I lost it and started crying – I was done, fried and tired.  I just wanted to be able to check something off my list.  After a drink, which always helps, I picked up my new cell phone to call AA.  Of course each call to American was an average of 15 minutes.  The first thing I had to do was try to get Marvin out in 4 hours – I did it!  After he left we just decided to relax – no work, no decisions, nothing – just drinking and dinner, how nice.