Back to St. Barts

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We were up around 7 am today. We had a quick breakfast in Terrace. Granola is back! There was another wildlife viewing at 8 am on deck 14. We were positioning to anchor. All we saw were some birds. Clay says it is a tern if white, otherwise it is some kind of booby. I got there late. We are anchored beside Sea Dream 2 today. Last week we were the only cruise here.

This was our second visit to St. Barts in a week. Once would have sufficed, but we don't control the schedule. It was not nearly as rough wind and surf today as last time. Conditions were better except for rain today, but that didn't affect tendering. The other thing was a lot fewer big yachts anchored out (at least a few had moved and were docked in the harbor today) so we were much closer to shore and better protected from swells. Still it was a rough ride and I still hate tendering. They announced right away this week that they would not transport scooters or passengers with impaired mobility because of safety concerns with the tossing of the tenders. Last week they didn't make that announcement until near noon.

We set out from the cabin shortly before 10 am and got pink tender tickets to depart shortly around 10 am. We were ashore around 10:30 am. We walked around the harbor to the Musee Municipal. It is in an historic building and free. It was almost all in French, so we got our money's worth. Shortly after we dropped our donation and left, the guy running it locked up and left counting the morning's donations. It was just after 11:30 am, it supposed to be open until noon, so we were glad we'd gotten in. If we'd spent an hour walking there to find it closed until after 2:30 pm, we'd have been pretty upset.

We walked back around the harbor by a slightly different route. We stopped at bought Clay a Le Select t-shirt again. We think he outgrew 2005's. We found a patch for me on the outbound walk. We had drinks at Le Select while we waited for food service to open at noon. We shared a cheeseburger and fries. The bar only took cash (USD or Euros) but the food side took MC and VISA or cash. A Presidente beer and a Coke Zero were 6 Euros and food was 8.5 Euros. So it was reasonably priced. It was really good food. I haven't had a burger aboard Riviera but Clay said the ship's burgers are nowhere near as tasty. We spent another $10 for a cold dessert while we waited for the tender line to diminish. It didn't. We just braved the rain and scrummed for the next tender. It was another nightmarish ride. Clay says that he never has to tender again. I hope that's true! We were back aboard about 2 pm.

All aboard is 5:30 pm and we sail at 6 pm. Today's stay is longer than last week's. Tomorrow we should be docked in Castries, St. Lucia again at 10 am. We have a different ship's tour this week, so we should see something different. Sadly according to Currents tomorrow we'll dock across the harbor from Castries at Point Seraphine. Last cruise we docked right down town at La Place Carenage. Our tour tomorrow sees other parts of the island away from Castries so we won't miss anything. But anyone on this cruise who thought they'd just walk into town... probably not.

We spent the afternoon after the rain storm cleared in the cool shade of our balcony. Much of the time, we had a big yacht, Eclipse, in view. We are both sure it was anchored by us last week as well. Today we watched a helicopter land on it and take off again. It was memorable. I Googled it and found it is since 2013, the world's 2nd largest private yacht. Memorable and that was in about 100 other nearby yachts.

We'll have dinner back at Terrace tonight.

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