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Webster - Log 24: Welcome to St Lucia!!!



Monday 16th December: Position Elena's bar St Lucia.
Having hand steered all night in all sorts of squalls st lucia was getting nearer by the minute, but a case of so near so far. Everyone was full of anticipation of our arrival but the sailing getting here in those last hours was quite difficult - mostly dead down wind and rolling all over the place. My ipad decided it could fly but hadn't leant to land properly, so there is a casualty I am afraid.

About 1500 local time Carl won the Blue Peter Badge and spotted land ahoy. Her also was proud winner of Dick of the Day - he was looking at the plotter for our overnight course made good and decided that we had come far too far north. I disputed this having steered deep all through the night so knew he could not be right, but he was insistent. Turns out he was looking at the wrong island on the chart - just can't get the staff nowadays!
 
As we approached the island we were hit by a couple of squalls. The first was not too bad and once it passed we put the spinnaker up. It had been up for a total of 5 minutes when a quick look behind persuaded me that the kite had to come down - like NOW guys!! We managed to get the thing on the deck when a rain squall with 45 knot winds hit us like an express train, quite the worst we had experienced on the trip. It had Welcome to St Lucia written all over it.

But we survived that one and rounded the point of Pigeon Island and call ARC Control on VHF. Lovely to hear a friendly voice with clear instructions for the finish line and there it was, the finish line. We powered over and finished at 17:34:30 and met by Carl's partner Suez on a rib, the ARC photographer, Albert's family on a water taxi handing us bottles of champagne, Ken from Unleashed from ARC Portugal out on a rib and people on VHF calling and congratulating us. 

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