When there's too much excitement

Endless Pleasure (before it all went pear shaped)

We finally met a boat we had heard about from our friends on Del Max. Tim and Steph on Endless Pleasure also have a Privilege catamaran that is very similar to ours, albeit a bit larger and spiffier. They're in the process of launching charters of their boat. They are nice, interesting, and fun, with personalities that should make their charters a success. Matt and I agree that most likely I do not have the personality to do charters. Matt says it's "definitely" rather than "most likely."

Rodney Bay - there's our boat right there.

 Tim and Steph helped us eat the gigantic wahoo we caught on the way to St. Lucia and we had lots of fun hanging out with them and swapping Privilege stories.

By the way, the sail from Martinique to St. Lucia was fantastic. We had the wind on our beam for the first time in a long time and we were flying in comfortable seas that only kicked up when Matt went onto the transom to clean the fish. Matt's advice when you're in that situation is not to look at the waves because they look way bigger from down there.

Steph nicknamed the produce boat guy Whole Foods Greg.

The best pineapple ever from Greg.

On our last day in St. Lucia before heading to Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines), we took up moorings next to each other near the Pitons. Moorings are required because it's a marine reserve and it's also extremely deep. We thought the moorings looked a little close together but figured we would swing the same way, being almost the same hull design. Everything was fine until around 8 p.m., just as we were putting the kids to bed. We heard Tim give a shout and found that the boats were swinging in different directions, putting us very close to one another. We had flashbacks to St.Augustine.



Steph took a break from fending off
 the boats to snap this picture.
We got a lot closer than this.

Endless Pleasure spun away and then spun back again, closer this time despite the fact that we had both shortened the mooring lines.  As we got out fenders and pondered what to do, our transoms actually overlapped and our dinghies were touching. 

A scale diagram depicting a bird's eye view of the near miss.
To be more accurate the dinghies should be touching.
Yes, those are supposed to be pictures of catamarans. Shh!

Matt and Tim averted disaster by pushing like heck on each other's dinghies. It is amazing that the boats were undamaged and that Matt didn't injure himself (because he has a knack for shedding blood in the most benign situations). We lowered our dinghy and Matt helped Endless Pleasure pick up a different ball in the pitch dark. Later, the wind picked up something fierce as we were held into the wind with the opposing current. It was an even clearer indication, as if we needed one, that moving was the right decision.

The next morning we headed to Bequia at the break of dawn. In hindsight, it's good that the decision was made to move one of the boats because otherwise no one would have slept a wink.