Fast Track Sailing!

We eventually got off from St Lucia, after a rather prolonged stay!

Ian arrived as expected on the 24th, a day for provisioning, and we left for Martinique on the 26th, stopped off in St Pierre at an over-night anchorage and then pushed on to Guadeloupe the day after,  stopped in a little town and marina called Rivière-Sens Gourbeyre on the south-west coast, a brief stop over, a meal in a restaurant and off the next day to Deshaies, a lovely little village where they film BBC’s “Death in Paradise”

It was a bit of a crowded anchorage and very very windy, so much so that as we stepped off our boat to go ashore Allegrini broke away, fortunately, we were only about 300m away so a quick U-turn and jumping back on board had the situation under control and we were soon in the restaurant having dinner.

We left there at the crack of dawn or slightly earlier and made our way towards St Thomas USVI, only to have the Autopilot malfunction (this long distance sailing malarkey certainly puts your kit through its paces) so a little diversion into the island of Saba for an overnight snooze and to fix the autopilot, meant we could get away to St Thomas the next day ( the autopilot was an easy fix, the connector rod must have not been fixed back properly when we disconnected it to do the rudder works)

The trip to St Thomas took a little longer than expected as the wind died, so when ended up coming into Redhook marina in the dark! A bit hairy to say the least, particularly as we were escorted in by the inter-island ferry!

We had had an issue with our Alternator and we’re hoping we could get a replacement in St Thomas, but alas unfortunately not. although we did stock up on Lures and fishing line for our next journey. Our next leg was a good 3.5 days trip up the coast of Puerto Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, culminating in a rather disturbing shallow water sail (3.5m) into Providenciales, Turks & Caicos, On the way our new fishing kit paid dividends and we caught 2 Blackfin Tuna in close succession.

This has restocked the fridges for a while and gave us two decent meals on route.

Caicos Marina and Shipyard on the south of the island is a quiet little marina in the early stages of redevelopment, we had arranged for the new alternator to be sent there directly from Balmar in the USA, we fitted that, changed the fuel filters, emptied the water out of the separator, checked the raw water filter and topped up the engine oil, from engineering perspective, we were in tip-top condition for our journey up the Bahamas Island chain.

 

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