Upon our arrival here we were pleasantly surprised to find free wireless Internet that reached us in the anchorage. The disadvantage is that we spend less time exploring. Still, we have a pleasant view from the boat, and the breeze is nice here. (I took the following pictures this morning between squalls.)
The closest shore with Sandals Resort in the background and Aquarelle in the foreground
The far shore with the mountains of the island in the background
The second surprise came the next morning at 8:30 when I suddenly heard a man's voice giving the weather on VHF Channel 68. Who knew? Rodney Bay now has a cruisers' net like Grenada. We monitor Channel 68 when we're in harbor anyway since Indigo told us it's the one people use here in the West Indies, so we just stumbled across the net.
One of the announcements after the weather was for the weekly cruising women's luncheon the next day (Wednesday). I've never attended anything like that before, but figured it couldn't hurt. We haven't caught up with the friends we crossed with yet, and we left our other friends further south, so it was time to make some new friends. While we were in the marina doing our check-in, we also saw John and Mo (Pauline) from Fiesta. We'd first met them on Grenada when we went to the Friday Fish Fry, and we saw them again in Bequia. We're obviously going the same direction, so we're starting to get acquainted.
The cruising women's luncheon was well worth attending. There were about 30 of us there, and the food was good. It was quite a mix of women. Many, if not most, come to Rodney Bay every year. Most, but not all, are on boats. Some have houses here. All are interesting and talented. The most amazing thing was that one of the women, Evelyn Drew, is an artist from Santa Cruz, CA. I'd met her and her husband, Terry, when I first moved to the Bay Area and went sailing with Mom on her friend Lou's boat, Red Hawk. It is indeed a small world. Their boat Aquarelle is anchored just toward shore from us, so we went over yesterday afternoon after we checked out to introduce John and catch up a bit.
My end of the table. Marcia from Crusader (in white) organizes this gathering.
The whole group
Yes, we've already checked out, and we're heading for Le Marin on Martinique in a little while. There we'll stock up on French wine and cheese before we move on.
(Posting delayed until next Internet connection due to rain that made us bring our antennas in.)
Well, we'll be here one more night, but we won't be going ashore. By the time the downpour stopped this morning and we got the dinghy on board so that we could go to the fuel dock to top up with duty-free fuel, it was 10:30. By the time we got everything taken care of at the fuel dock, it was past 11:30. There are reefs and lobster pots in the approach to our next anchorage, so we have to get there in daylight. We probably could have made it before sunset (about 6:15), but we didn't want to risk failure
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