Day 1 Friday April 15, 2005 Rodney Bay, St. Lucia
Lynn and I are flying to St. Lucia out of Dorval, Montreal, a 2 hour drive away. Our flight leaves at 6 AM so we’re up at 1 AM in order to make it in time. We’re at Dorval at 4 AM and by 6 AM we’re on our way. We change planes in Chicago but there’s a problem with the second plane so we have a 2 hour delay. By 4 PM we touch down in St. Lucia. We’re on the island! However we’re at the international airport at the south end of the island and Bill’s waiting at the north end. $60 US and a 2 hour taxi drive gets us to Rodney Bay just as the sun is setting. We unload the car and the driver, “Social” waits while I go looking for Bill. No Bill. No need to panic. I haven’t looked everywhere and what do you do when you’re waiting for someone in a strange marina? Head into the biggest bar, have a drink and wait! Which is what we did. Lynn was pretty tired and nervous about me leaving her alone but the barman said she’d be just fine so I ordered her a drink and went out to the marina and checked the docks. No Bill. I then went to the other small bars and everywhere else to look, still no sign of him. Back at the bar I asked about radioing Chispa and the barman pointed to a VHF set just down the bar. Every few minutes I’d try to hail Bill but with no success.
Suddenly Lynn was waving wildly, Bill was here! It seemed he’d been waiting for a while and had gone to put on the anchor light just before we arrived. Bill had been a bit concerned too but a celebratory drink put us all in a festive if tired mood.
We piled into the small runabout and motored out of the marina into the harbour where Chispa was anchored. We happily climbed about, chatted, ate a fine pasta dinner and were fast asleep by 9 PM, Chispa swaying gently in the cool evening breeze.