The Pitons are twin mounts in the Southern part of Saint-Lucia. They are the landmarks of the island: from the island brew, the Piton beer, to the logo on the customs officials, anyone who spends time in Saint-Lucia knows their silhouette before even making it there... Their sight had taken our breath the day we emerged from the Caribbean Sea from Bonaire after 6 days at sea but we had landed further North in Marigot Bay. On our way back from the Grenadines, we decided to see them a little bit closer...
We left early from Bequia as we had quite a few miles before reaching our destination: the Pitons in Saint-Lucia. Also, we needed to arrive in daylight to grab a mooring ball in this deep bay which is also a marine park. In addition, during our check-out in Bequia, a lot of people going North were also preparing to leave as early as possible, so chances were the race for mooring would be on! Indeed, at 7 AM, we were among the last boats to leave.
Becalmed behind Saint Vincent. All the opportunities in the world to see the pretty anchorages we didn't get the chance to stop by, including a shooting sight of Pirates of the Caribbean!!
Like it did on the way down, a minute later we were hammering with the second reef in as we were beginning to feel the wind funneling from in-between the islands of Saint-Vincent and Saint-Lucia.
Time to set our brave wind vane Avocet and let her steer like a champ while we held on to our stomachs in the swelly channel. To be honest, we were very pleased with her performance in these windy conditions. We reefed her and we set our course quite upwind, anticipating the counter-current that also funneled hard in these channels.
A few hours later, Pitons are in sight! Remember this race I talked about for the moorings... Turned out we won it despite departing last. Since we anticipated the current, we were able to sail all the way straight on Jalousy Bay (in-between the Pitons, very classy!) while our contestants were motoring directly into the wind to make up for the distance they had been carried away downwind. We got the two last moorings and were right in time for a dip at the foot of those impressive mountains!
Going to bed and waking up in between these mountainous giants was quite a scene. Cruisers tend to skip this anchorage due to the bad reputation of the neighboring city Soufrière. Some skip Saint Lucia altogether. And we did skip the whole Southern part at first as well, but after hearing about several friend boats who went there and had an uneventful and quite magical stay, we decided the stop in the Pitons made sense. So glad we didn't miss it! It made quite an impression! And yes, we were on our toes, but no, at no point have we felt unsafe.
The moon showed up!
Sadly, show must go on! We still had to make the most of our weather window and reach Rodney Bay in the North of the island.
Bye-bye Pitons, with very little winds for us in the lee of the island...
Good thing we left early though, as it became very rainy soon after!
But the rain eventually caught us, it came with some wind...
... at the cost of getting ourselves a little wet!
February 2o23