Marigot Bay …. 26 January 2018

Marigot Bay    ….    Friday 26 January 2018

After a peaceful night in the harbor at Castries, the morning brought two new cruise liners to the dock. We first saw “Celebrity Eclipse” complete a 360o turn in the outer harbor – it looked like there might have been 10 feet clear on either end! Then “Grandeur of the Seas” came in to the dock right next to us. We were literally the only sailboat in the inner harbor – our only company were these humongous cruise liners and tug boat. In contrast, Marigot harbor, which we reached after a one hour sail on a broad reach, is jam packed with cruising boats. It’s a narrow finger of water, with steep hills on either side and a lagoon at the end. It’s a perfect hurricane hole. The inner lagoon is full of moorings with no room to anchor, so we chose to drop our hook outside of the channel in the outer harbor. The water shoals quite quickly from 50+ feet in the channel to 7 or 8 feet close to shore. With so many boats it’s a challenge to find a spot with good depth and adequate swinging room. Our initial attempt seemed fine until we spotted a large rock off to the side, probably too deep to bang into, but perfectly set up to wrap the anchor chain around. We opted to move and found a better spot in 10-15 feet of water, depending on the direction we are lying.

In the afternoon we rowed the dinghy to shore and took a hike up the hillside from the “Mango Beach Hotel” to the ridge and national Park above. It was  a short but steep walk straight up hill, with ropes to assist you at the steepest sections. Once on the ridge you get some nice views across the hills and down into the inner harbor. A little further along there is a view along the coast line, but it’s all quite heavily vegetated so hard to see too much. We hoped to see lots of birds, but it was only towards the end of the hike as we entered the Oasis resort gardens that we started to see much. There were lots of humming birds and Caribbean bullfinches, as well as a Saltator and a warbler we yet to identify (not in our East Coast bird book). We stopped at the resort bar “Doolittles” for a drink and then wandered back to our dinghy and on to Cotinga for a quiet evening. Dinner was a fine vegetarian meal with black beans, quinoa, corn and eggplant with cumin and ancho pepper – it was delicious!

Castries          14^o 0.8 N, 60^o 59.6 W

Marigot           13^o 58.0 N, 61^o1.5 W

Celebrity Eclipse - Castries Harbor

Female Caribbean Bullfinch

Male Caribbean Bullfinch

Water lily at Mango Beach Hotel