Cruising St Lucia - Day 5

Nevil Adkins

We stayed the whole day in Bayahaut Bay, snorkelling both off the back of the yacht and taking the dingy round to the next bay. The boys explored the abandoned resort, reporting back that the jungle had almost totally covered the remains of the building that were once there. In the afternoon, I took the dingy round to Kingstown to check out of St Vincent immigration. I had forgotten that it was Sunday and was very lucky to catch the customs man just before he left on the ferry, and he had to call back the immigration lady to do our paperwork. I picked up more food, including some blue marlin steaks, in the supermarket. We barbequed on the back of the boat as the sun was setting then set sail for our overnight passage back to St Lucia. Luke & I took the first watch until about 0200. Finishing my watch I went below and slept but Luke stayed up a bit longer with Rob to give Rache more time sleeping. Arriving in Marigot Bay, we anchored on the north side of the bay. Rob was concerned that the anchor wasn’t holding so I took transits and kept checking that we weren’t dragging for a couple of hours as we were having breakfast. Not having budged on the transits I was happy we were holding so we all went ashore for a walk around. Although we intended to check-in at Rodney Bay later on, the harbour master told us we had to checkin immediately so I went back to the yacht for our papers. Still no movement on the transits. Back to the harbour master’s office and we were just completing the formalities when Luke spotted the yacht being towed into the harbour by fishermen, who reported that she had drifted off. Highly skeptical, we got back aboard (but left our passports behind in the shock and rush) and checked the story with a yacht moored nearby. They said the yacht had started to drift and was rescued by the fishermen. I remain convinced that the fishermen had pulled the yacht off, threatened the neighbours and staged the whole thing, but maybe we did drift… It cost us US$200 to pay off the fishermen, half what they wanted, and left us quite shaken. Reflecting on it later, I should have taken greater notice of Rob’s concern, inspected the anchor was holding properly and/or tested the holding with the engine in reverse rather than simply relying on monitoring transits.