The Pitons, St. Lucia, Day 3, first Adventure.
What a difference a group makes. After 5 frantic days of repairs, provisioning, getting Clinton back from Florida and Joaquin Hubbard, our good friend from Seattle down to help fill the departed chef’s shoes it’s been all laughs. These guys are wild! I met Cory, his wife Patrece and some of their friends this summer in Utah while wandering for a few days at the helm of the Best RV. Man, they said they loved to party but what an understatement! I haven’t laughed this hard since college.

We picked up Cory and Patrece at noon on Saturday in Soufriers, a small town on the west coast of the island that had that peculiar and not altogether likable mix of simple, poor town and mainstream tourism which has done its inevitable damage. Within seconds of tying off on the dock we had hoardes of kids and adults pestering us for money, coins, t-shirts, booze, coke. And they weren’t particularly polite or for that matter very needy looking. Just demanding.

But there was one little guy with gorgeous dreads you couldn’t just ignore. He sat shyly in the back of the group in underwear with a big grin and Jody had her lens out immediately. He posed with a huge smile, then smartly demanded something in return. We gave him a t-shirt for his efforts, which sent the rest of the crowd in a dimmed uproar, prompting us to hastily retreat back into the cockpit. Shortly thereafter while eating lunch another of the boys kept yelling, “Mister, mister, hey mister…”. I tried ignoring it but eventually had to take notice. When I turned and asked what was up he said, “hey man, there’s a little Rasta man on your boat!” Sure enough, we had a little Rasta man on the boat and Jody caught him in the act. The laughs started there and haven’t diminished since.

I then sailed the short distance back to Vieux Fort and Anse de Sable beach while Cory, Patrece, Clinton, and Jody went down by taxi so they could get in a kite session before sunset. That night, with two more women joining us- Holly and Erin, all friends of Cory and Patrece, along with Joaquin, just in from over two days of missed flights and nightmare travel from Seattle and with the help of an incredibly unhealthy amount of liquor,things got very interesting. Maybe it was the lunar eclipse, which came up just over our stern around 10 p.m., but thing got very, very very interesting. Let’s just say you couldn’t get that kind of show in the finest strip club in the world. That and we definitely need a pole and a disco light before these guys come out again! The pictures here are the tamest we could find. Sorry, can’t show more or we might get sued. Let’s just say there were some wide eyes and dancing that was far from square that evening.

On Sunday Erin and Holly’s husbands, Mike and Lance arrived who thankfully found the pictures hysterical and were clearly all in for more fun. A great session was had on Monday back at Anse de Sable beach. Lance is just learning to fly a kite and spent the morning training one on one with Clinton. Imagine having one of the top kiters in the world as your own personal instructor. As Clinton will be on Discovery for the rest of the month (we’re doing an all-pro trip with he and Shannon Best on the 17th) I can only hope the rest of us will glean some skills from him as well. He’s a remarkable athlete and an incredibly humble and kind person. We all love him and if it weren’t for his promising kiting career I’d love to keep him on as crew. He will be welcomed back in the years to come.

Last night we had a sunset sail back up to the Pitons, a favorite anchorage on the last trip and one of the more spectacular places I’ve ever sailed. The gang got in an early wall dive this morning and then we motored up the lee side of the island back into Rodney Bay. From here it’s a 5 minute drive over to Cas En Bas beach, home of the Tornado kite and surf school, and some great local kiters we’ve had the pleasure of getting to know.
