We remained in Prince Rupert Bay on the 20th, awaiting better sailing conditions to move on to Martinique and St. Lucia. We were lucky to have a break in the rain to watch the total lunar eclipse early in the morning of the 21st. Wow, lunar eclipse and winter solstice on the same day. There must be some higher meaning with that!

We departed at daylight for Martinique and had a fabulous trade winds passage during which we witnessed a couple of pods of migrating whales spouting not far off the Dominica coastline where we were already in depths of thousands of feet of water . We arrived at Petite Anse d'Arlets on the SW coast of Martinique for the night. We "yellow flagged" it here and departed for St. Lucia at 0630 the morning of the 22nd. We endured a very squally passage across the St. Lucia channel to Rodney Bay at the NW tip of the island. We double reefed both the main and genoa to make the passage as comfortable as possible. We got pretty wet, but it wasn't as rough as it could have been and besides, it was warm. This was a pretty short passage and we arrived around noon and cleared into customs with squishy shoes.

It continued raining, hard at times, for several days and Dave filled every spare water container on the boat with rain water, at times filling 4 bottles simultaneously--feeling like the guy trying to keep all those plates spinning. Despite the rain we ventured ashore for grocery shopping and to check availability of line to replace the main halyard. The "new" main halyard replaced before leaving Norfolk was fraying again up near the mast head and Dave decided enough was enough and it was best to go back to garden variety double braid line rather than the expensive "good stuff" . Dave did find and buy some line for less than US$1 per foot duty free – less expensive than comparable line in the US.

On Christmas Eve, Hank and Seale with guests Ron and Micki aboard S/V FLASH arrived in Rodney Bay, as expected, and we went together ashore to the Christmas Eve Happy Hour hosted by the St. Lucia Yacht Club. It was a nice laid back affair and the hard rain held off for a few hours to make the dinghy ride back and forth to shore tolerable. We also enjoyed the company of cruisers from S/V Cataway (Ken and Joan) and S/V Tranquility (Lee and Cindy). Christmas morning arrived with Santa delivering more melted snow and the Happy Hour crowd all agreed the planned SLYC Christmas Day beach potluck BBQ was likely to be a wash out. Donna offered up "Plan B" which would be to hold a traditional holiday meal aboard Pas de Deux. Everyone from FLASH, Cataway, and Tranquility accepted our invitation to join us for dinner. Our guests contributed delicious additions to the menu and we enjoyed a terrific dinner for 10, complete with holiday music from Sirius. Fortunately, we only needed to dodge the hard rain that arrived after dinner and rather quickly leaked through our bimini top, forcing all to seek refuge inside the salon to enjoy desserts.