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snorkeling off St. Lucia
Thursday, February 26 2026
location: Cabin 300, the Star Clipper ship anchored off Soufriere, St. Lucia, the Caribbean Sea
After breakfast this morning, Gretchen and I rode with Kelly and Brian via a tender to a dry landing on the dock in Soufriere, though it was a little tricky to actually dock, as assholes captaining ships full of white(er) people kept nosing in to the dock in front of us, oblivious to their place in line. We were only on the dock for less than a minute before the four of us had booked a water taxi to another beach north up the coast where the snorkeling would supposedly be good. Mind you, Kelly and Brian were not going to be snorkeling and hadn't even brought any snorkel gear, but evidently they wanted to see what things were like at this other, less populated, beach. The captain of our water taxi reminded me a lot of the captain of the one we'd taken a couple days ago from Paradise Beach Club. He was calm, friendly, and spoke excellent English. He told us he'd just bought this boat, and, though clearly used, it looked to be in excellent shape. He dropped us off at pier (13.8679N, 61.0792W), and while Kelly and Brian sat in Adirondack chairs in the shade just off the pier, Gretchen and I immediately started snorkeling among the rocks to the south. Gretchen of course got going much faster than I did because she doesn't use flippers and jumps in the water without any period of acclimation, or, as she says, "rip the bandaid off." I'm more of a "watch every arm hair slowly detach" kind of person. But eventually I was snorkeling about as good as I do, which is always a little on the edge of panic, especially when the seafloor drops off beneath me. There were some amazing sessile organisms (were they plants, animals, or neither?) flapping back and forth in the surf, and there were plenty of colorful fish, none of them generated by artficial intelligence. I swam out around a rocky peninsula and then decided I'd had enough and so strolled back to join Kelly and Brian in the shade. At that point they took the opportunity to take a surprisingly long stroll to the north and back.
At some point Gretchen had had enough of the snorkeling there by the pier and decided to go see how it was around a rocky point to the south (13.8637N, 61.0797W). She was gone for maybe twenty minutes before hurrying back to fetch me. She said the snorkeling was incredible and that I must see. So hurried after her down the beach, made my way around a building that jutted out into the surf, and then through a throng of white people at Scuba St. Lucia trying to figure out how to snorkel for the first time. I consider myself a lame snorkeler, but these people were so lame that they were each carrying pool noodles into the surf with them. They were also clogging a single ladder into the water off the concrete pad where they prepared themselves. From there, the water was too deep to wade in, so I had to snorkel like a champion. Fortunately, none of these snorkel dilettantes (or "stupos," as Gretchen referred to them, using a term she'd recently learned from Kelly & Brian) ventured far from the ladder and seemed to mostly be floating in place with pool noodles hooked in their armpits. Gretchen guided me out to a wall of rock covered in colorful coral and speckled with various electric-hued fishes. Maybe it wasn't, as she had said, "better than the Galapagos," but it was pretty good. We went out some distance and then I grew concerned from the disappearance of places to rescue myself should I experience technical difficulties, so I grabbed onto some handholds on the rock face, removed my snorkel, and told Gretchen "I think I'm going back; this was a lot!" And so I did.
When I got back to the ladder up to the concrete slab, the only way out of the water, I saw there was a line of stupos floating on pool noodles, and they were coming relentlessly. Not only that, but they seemed to take forever to climb that ladder even though, unlike me, they weren't wearing flippers. I clung on to a cliff face and watched them with increasing frustration as the surf occasionally tried to dislodge me. At some point I just asserted myself and quickly scaled that ladder despite my flippers. I then gathered my things and walked back to the Adirondack chairs where Kelly and Brian were again sitting. By then it was almost time for the water taxi guy to pick us up. Gretchen, who wanted to maximize her time snorkeling in the awesome spot beyond the stupos, had told me to have the water taxi guy pick her up over there.
The water taxi guy didn't seem all that excited to do a wet extraction over by the stupos, but he said he'd do it. First, though, he picked up a captain from a nearby catamaran. The two seemed like old buddies. As for Gretchen, we didn't see her at first, but then she materialized on the concrete platform and headed north along the beach until she got to a place deep enough for the water taxi to come in close. From there it was easy.
On the way back to the dock in Soufriere, the water taxi captain took us to a big vertical gap in the layers of volcanic rock exposed on the cliff-face northwest of the town and pointed out the bats that could be seen flapping their wings in there despite it being broad daylight.
When we got to the dock, Gretchen suddenly realized she didn't have a $20 (US) bill that she thought she had, so how was she going to pay her part of the taxi fare? Fortunately, there happened to be a bunch of people from our ship on the dock at the time, so when Gretchen asked if anyone had any American dollars, that Australian geezer who'd sung "Waltzing Matilda" the other night when we were doing karaoke said he had a spare $20 bill. Gretchen didn't need quite that much, so she gave him $5 back, and was still able to pay our part of the water taxi fare and a tip, since the snorkeling had been so good and she'd been picked up off the beach as a separate extraction.
Back on the boat, there was a Middle-Eastern-themed lunch, complete with falafel balls, hummus, and curries with a Turkish inflection (think Afghan). This was by far my favorite lunch so far and I ate a lot of it.
Later when we ran across the Australian geezer guy, we asked if he had Venmo, and of course he'd never heard of it, so we were going to have to find some other way to pay him back.
As we departed St. Lucia, we were all encouraged to get up on deck for the sail raising and departure, given how dramatic St. Lucia is with its two towering volcanic plugs (Gros Piton and Petit Piton). As we sailed south, I noticed another superyacht anchored between the pitons.
At dinner tonight, I was seated with our usual six-person clique when I saw the Australian geezer pass by in the distance. So I ran to catch up with him, which wasn't easy, as he was moving quickly for a man who looked to be in his late 70s (although with white Australians it can be hard to tell, given the damage their skin sustains). When I caught up with him, I told him he could bill hois drinks to our room, 300. "You mean about the little money I gave you? They won't let you do that," he said simply, as if I was an idiot (which in this case I more or less was). "But there's lots of time left," he assured me.
After dinner, the boat hosted a so-called talent show featuring the "talents" of both staff and. Things started on a bad note when someone from the staff came out a played electric guitar while singing something clearly out of tune. Then someone did an Ed Sheeran song not particularly well, but then for some reason sung it a second time in Italian. Soon thereafter the Australian geezer, whom I had started referring to as "Billabong" after one of the nonsense expressions in "Waltzing Matilda" took the stage. It was becoming clear that he was something of a glutton for limelight despite his limited talents. I don't remember what he sang, but it wasn't "Waltzing Matilda" and it wasn't very good. After he finished, I ran over to him and tried to buy him a drink, since I really didn't feel good about the debt hanging in the air. "But I already have a drink," he said. I was desperate, so I said, "Can I buy you another drink." "Settle down," he said with irritation. Now I was fully embarrassed, so I sheepishly walked away, determined to have nothing to do with Billabong for the rest of the cruise. I'd tried my best to settle accounts, but it had proved impossible.
Not long after that, a youngish cool-looking guy who had given a terrible performance on karaoke night took the stage and proceeded to give a horrendous rendition of Pearl Jam's "Black," which happens to be one of Gretchen's favorite Pearl Jam songs (she admits to having been a grunge fan in the early 1990s in Milwaukee, well before we got back together). It wasn't just that he was singing far out of key, but he was also playing that electric guitar on loan from the cruise musician, and he was making a real mess of things. Gretchen turned to me during this performance and said that this was her greatest fear, that she would make a fool of herself in front of a room full of people. Evidently nobody had ever told this gentleman that he had no talent. And, truth be told, nobody told him tonight either, because he got a good round of applause when the song (which is a long one) finally came to an end.
There were some good moments though, such as when one of the staffers showed his talents for making a pair of oven mitts lip-sync to a duet. And I thought Nurse Brian's performance as a diva lip syncing Madonna's "Material Girl" was pretty good, especially with the supporting entourage of fawning & dancing men played by other members of the crew. It occurred to me that, while trans people are being pushed into the shadows in the supposed Land of the Free, they're still actually free in places as random as a sailing ship in the Caribbean. (Gretchen was less impressed by Brian's peformance, thinking is strayed into the ridiculous in a way that she did not seem to be aware of.)
I haven't mentioned him yet, but the ship's musician has been a standout talent on this cruise. Earlier this week, he gave an impressive performance of "Sultans of Swing" on guitar while singing (that is not an easy song) and later he performed a bunch of songs from the early part of the Beatles catalog (too early, Brian grumbled). During late afternoon snack hour while I've been hanging out with my laptop in the piano bar, he's been effortlessly cranking out a wide range of music on piano. He's far better than certain other musicians from earlier cruises (the guy who kept playing "Achy Breaky Heart" on the Elbe cruise comes to mind). Tonight he and some other members of the crew did a hilarious lip-sync of "Gangnam Style" and then he concluded the talent show with an amazing performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody."
A happy Gretchen on the water taxi. Click to enlarge.
From the left: Brian, Kelly, and me on the water taxi. Click to enlarge.
Me in the shade while Gretchen is snorkeling and Brian and Kelly are strolling along the coastal road. Click to enlarge.
Jade Mountain Resort, which our water taxi captain told us costs over $1000/month. Click to enlarge.
Petit Piton. Click to enlarge.
A superyacht. Click to enlarge.
Gros Piton. Click to enlarge.
More of Gros Piton. Click to enlarge.
A landslide at the base of Gros Piton. Click to enlarge.
Guys working way up on the rigging. Click to enlarge.
Sails raised the evening. Click to enlarge.
People relaxing on the top deck. You can see Kelly and Gretchen just in front of the walking woman in pink. Click to enlarge.
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