St. Lucia

St. Lucia actually marks the first port that we’ve ever repeated, on this our seventh cruise. Turned out there were 4 ships in port today. Us, the Oceania Regatta, the TUI cruises Mein Schiffe, and the Queen Mary 2. For those doing the math, there’s really only about 3 spots to dock ships in St. Lucia. The Mein Schiffe and Regatta were docked over at the newer cruise terminal that we docked at when we were here on the Crown Princess. We were docked across the harbor at an area that might have been an older cruise terminal, but largely seems to be used for cargo these days. That left the QM2 outside the harbor tendering in. (And from some comments by their crew, I don’t think they were real happy about that.) The only reason I can think of that the QM2 would get the short straw is that it’s a big ship, and I don’t think it could dock at the spot we were at, and if docked at the main cruise ship terminal, I think they’d only be able to dock one ship there (I know when we were there in the Crown Princess it didn’t look like they’d be able to fit another ship there at the same time.) So if the QM2 had docked, there would have been 2 ships tendering.

We hadn’t really had any plans here, so ended up taking a ship’s snorkeling tour. They took us down the coast a little to a bay that appears to be some sort of marine reserve. We spent a couple hours there snorkeling. I’d rate the snorkeling there as adequate. We’ve certainly had better snorkeling, but also have had worse. Not much coral around here, and a somewhat limited selection of fish. Visibility was better in some places than others.

On the way back to the ship we ducked into Marigot Bay to look around. Nice looking place, a couple of larger yachts in the harbor there.

We were the first ship leaving port today. There was quite a crowd along the rails to watch the QM2 as we sailed by.

Oh, and shortly before sailing we got the news that the weather had been rough in St Barts today, preventing tendering. Since the forecast for tomorrow is more of the same, they’ve cancelled our call in St Barts and substituted St Maarten instead. Weather could still be iffy to get into port, but since it wouldn’t be a tender port at least there’s a greater chance of making the port stop.