We stayed on Seahike on the 2nd and worked on a puzzle. We tried to rent a car on the 3rd so we could drive to the Boiling Lake Trailhead, but nothing was available. I decided to walk into town to have a good cup of coffee and stroll around.

Roseau is not a rich town, or at least not all of it is. The downtown area seems to be doing well, but that might be because that’s where the cruise ships dock. But the rest is a study in contrasts. Consider the pictures from the walk to downtown compared to the downtown area.

On the way to the downtown area:

Closer to downtown:

Beautiful view from my walk:

It was tour day! We’d been told that we would be visiting five sites. That turned out not to be true. But we thoroughly enjoyed what we saw, smelled, tasted, and did!

So, we took the dinghy to the little dock near Seahike and waited for the other tour members – as well as the driver/guide – to arrive. Upon meeting the other tour members (three of them), we learned that they are all Norwegians. This was super exciting to us as my ancestry is 100% Norwegian and Michael is half Norwegian. They were all super nice and friendly and spoke English, which was nice since we don’t speak Norwegian!

We’d read really good things about this guide and they proved to be true. He was super knowledgeable, kind and very funny and outgoing! I swear he knows just about everyone on the island!

Big picture first: We hiked to Middleham Falls, jumped into and swam in Titou Gorge, had a great lunch, then climbed up Trafalgar Falls. In between, our guide stopped the car numerous times to pick up various flora for us to taste or smell. Sometimes we just admired the item and he told us how they used it in Dominica. Other times, he asked us to identify the flora by smell. Boy, was that much tougher than I thought it would be. The Norwegians were much better at identifying the product than Michael and I were.

Now a tad more detail and photos.

We left the marina on the 20th and anchored in Rodney Bay South, waiting for a weather window to sail to Martinique.

We took the dinghy to town to drop off our dirty laundry (which, by the way, cost $80 (!) to wash and dry, although it was probably three loads). When we got in the dinghy later that afternoon to pick up the laundry, the motor wouldn’t start. We tried for some time, then left it alone for 15 minutes so it could sulk since it was clearly having one of those days. 😉

This time it started right up. We took off towards the marina (the laundry is there) but about halfway there, the motor stopped. We couldn’t get it going so we were preparing to row the rest of the way. Turns out we didn’t have to do that because a couple in another dinghy asked us if we wanted a tow. We did!

We picked up our laundry and went back to the dinghy. The motor started and ran all the way back to Seahike.

But it appeared that the dinghy had a leak. There was more water in the bottom than usual, even after a good rain. Michael decided this was probably as good a time as any to buy a new dinghy.

There was a celebration happening later in the day on the 10th in Soufrière. We had learned that the day before from our friendly waiter. What we didn’t know is that it would impact our ability to eat breakfast in the town. After trying about five places, a super helpful and smiley woman recommended Seashell Beach Restaurant on the other side of town. It is a resort restaurant, so of course it would be open.

On our way to try to find food (before we were told about Seashell):

They had just finished serving breakfast when we arrived, but she told us that we could still order an omelet or scrambled eggs. Michael had the former and I had the latter. The view from the restaurant was great, and we ended up being really glad that the others were closed.

We’d been in St. Lucia for about a week when we went on a three-day trip to the interior. We rented a very small car. It had an automatic transition, for which I was grateful. I didn’t know how grateful I would be until I drove on the roads. I guess I should have known that driving might be tricky when the advice from the rental car agent was, “Try to avoid potholes.” (I should also note that they also drive on the wrong side of the street here. Smile.)

January 8

Our first trip was to Rainforest Adventures, about 45 minutes away from the marina, to go ziplining. The road was very curvy, which was fine, and had a LOT of potholes, which I tried my best to avoid.

The package we signed up for had eight ziplines. The second to the last one was the longest at 347 feet. All were deep in the rainforest, so the views were lovely.

December 24-25

We sailed overnight on Christmas Eve to the first anchorage in St. Lucia. We had good winds for a time and flew the genoa.

We were the only boat in the Vieux fort anchorage. It wasn’t super pretty, but it was peaceful.

December 19:

We began our visit to Barbados anchored on the northwest side of the island, in the bay by Port St. Charles and Heywoods Beach. This provided easy access to check into the country. We also had easy access to a restaurant with a Santa Claus (as seen in pictures in our last post).

But first, we needed to start the dinghy motor. It started but it wouldn’t rev up at all. So we made an exceptionally slow trip to land to check in. Then we took an exceptionally slow trip back to Seahike. In the meantime, we had a lovely (albeit, very expensive) lunch at the little restaurant with Santa Claus.

Steffan and Michael did some brainstorming about the outboard motor. Steffan checked the spark plugs but said they looked good. If I recall correctly, he also replaced a filter. I know that Steffan removed, disassembled and cleaned the carburetor. And Michael posited that perhaps we’d gotten some bad gas the last time we bought it. So we emptied out the old gas (into one of our empty jerry cans) and took another slow trip to the fuel dock with our empty jerry can to get some brand new gas. The combination of new (good) gas and a clean carburetor (with none of the bad gas left on it), did the trick. We now had our dinghy motor back at full speed!

We had a dream crossing! We expected it to take 16 days (with a max of 20), but it took 13.5 days. The weather was great and our new spinnaker (which we used for the first time) was fantastic!

Let’s go back a bit, though.

We knew we needed to arrive in Cape Verde (from the Canary Islands) on or before November 29th. Two of our friends (one was our former sailing instructor) were meeting us at the marina in Mindelo, Cape Verde on the 29th. We arrived on the 26th.

We spent the days prior to the 29th prepping for the crossing so we didn’t have time for any fun. 🙁 We cleaned Seahike inside and out, updated our insurance, hired a weather router, did some provisioning (we’d already bought quite a bit of food and beverages but needed more), swapped an empty butane tank for a full one, re-inventoried all of our boat supplies, inventoried our food and beverages (after buying more), changed the engine oil and gear oil, and had some work done on Seahike:

1. New main halyard
2. New spinnaker halyard
3. New genoa furling line (we’d already gotten a new one but it turned out to be too thin – we needed a larger diameter)
4. New AIS (ours was still working, but not good enough)
5. Cleaned her bottom

We’d had our life raft inspected in the Canary Islands. It has now been certified for three years.

I talked about arriving in Mindelo in the last post, and I will talk about what we did to prepare for the crossing in the next post, but I haven’t shared anything about Mindelo. I am using this post to share the town and some of our time there – in a very random order – with you.

The statue you see below is the Eagle statue, or Águia (Eagle) Mindelo. It is a homage from the city of Mindelo to Sacadura Caral and Gago Coutinho. It is a commemoration of the 76th anniversary of the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic. It is even on Facebook! I like the FB entry:

The Majestic Águia Mindelo Statue: A Beacon of Inspiration 

In the heart of Mindelo stands a symbol that reaches for the skies and embodies the spirit of this remarkable city – the Águia Mindelo Statue

Guardian of the Harbor: Perched at the entrance to Mindelo’s harbor, the Águia Mindelo Statue has greeted sailors, travelers and dreamers for generations. Its wings outstretched, it stands as a guardian of this bustling maritime hub

A Tribute to Aviation: This stunning sculpture pays homage to the pioneers of aviation who dared to defy gravity and soar into the unknown. It’s a tribute to the first flight from Portugal to Brasil in 1922 and also a tribute to human ambition, innovation and the unwavering belief that the sky is not the limit

Wings of Freedom: The Águia Mindelo Statue represents the freedom of the open skies, the limitless possibilities that lie beyond the horizon and the courage to chase one’s dreams, no matter how high they may seem

A Place of Reflection: Whether you’re a local or a visitor, take a moment to pause by this iconic statue. Reflect on the journey that brought you here, the dreams you harbor and the adventures that await you

We’d hoped to leave Tenerife on November 16th so we would have some play time in Cape Verde before our crew arrived on the 29th. We actually did leave on the 16th but we aborted about 15 miles in due to the heavy winds and unfriendly waves (neither of which were predicted).

Thankfully, there was an anchorage a short distance from us so we tucked in there. We ended up staying three days, leaving on the 19th.