Reverse

two cuties on the beach in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia

One morning, while still in St. Anne’s Martinique, we suffered a calamity. Our propane stove would not light! Oh god, no coffee? How can one start any day without at least two cups of coffee?

Captain Gil wasted no time troubleshooting (no ‘procaffeinating’ on this one), and deduced that the issue was most likely a faulty solenoid. We did not have a spare on board L.  We figured we were lucky to be so close to Le Marin, the yachties’ meca. You can get or have almost anything you want or need here. Almost. As our luck would have it, a solenoid for an American propane system, is not something you can get in Martinique! Who’d have guessed? This was an item that we were able to source, however, in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia; where we had just come from. Why couldn’t the stove have gone then?

You know you are a cruiser when you really think nothing of sailing 4-5 hours back from where you just came from, simply to pick up a boat part. Gil actually got excited at the prospect of possibly hooking another big fish.

So, that’s how it came to be that we ‘reversed.’

We waited a day (or two?) because of heavy rains and squalls. We made do with the use of our cockpit BBQ (it takes forever to boil water on a BBQ) until the weather cleared enough to ‘go.’ Even so, we did run into a squall coming into St. Lucia…

This is going to sound a little ridiculous, but at times like this we’re thankful for several things…. #1. you can see the squall coming and get your sails in,   #2. we have radar so we can still see where the land is, and where other boats are (all your eyes see is whiteness), and #3. we have a full cockpit enclosure so we stay dry!

We had a pleasant surprise waiting for us back in Rodney Bay. Cat Tales was there! They had arrived the same day as us. We got together with Laurie & Dawn for Happy Hour ashore.

Dawn, John & Laurie sharing a Piton beer bucket

enjoying the company of old friends

After replacing the solenoid, we had our stove back. Yeah! Gil could eat potatoes again J.

We didn’t stay long in Rodney Bay, as we had just been there. The weather was still good to ‘go’ so we returned  to Martinique. 

On a sad note, Captain Gil caught no fish on either sail between Martinique and St. Lucia.

the boobies caught all the fish!