Day 4 of our cruise was a stop in St. Lucia. What a beautiful place. We had an excursion to go deep sea fishing early in the morning, the excursion H was really looking forward to. H has gone deep sea fishing before, I had not. I'm a stream/river/pond kind of girl. We started the day kind of disappointed in Royal Caribbean's excursion crew because we had asked how many people would be going on this trip before we booked it and they had told us only 6, since the boats are small and it gives everyone a chance. Great, we'll take it. That's the same as it is up here in New England. When we got outside, waiting for our group, we asked the gentleman how many people we were waiting for and he tells us 9! Wait a minute, didn't they just tell us it was only 6? Now we have 3 more people to squeeze on this boat. The gentleman tells us there are multiple boats and sometimes there are people who book from the hotels and other cruise ships and they divide them up. Oh, ok that sounds a little better. Well, we all got crammed into one boat. Mind you, these boats are not very spacious or have many seats. We were sitting on the sides of the boat and a few people were up in the top seats. You can not sit inside the cabin unless you want to get sick. We started heading out, they put the bait on (which happened to be those fish we saw the day before that swim on the surface that look like swordfish.. how cool?!) and let the 6 lines out. We were sitting up top but then 3 more people came up so we went back down. I put my bag inside the cabin so I wouldn't lose it but then I had to go get my camera because we were coming up to the famous Piton mountains. Right then, I started to feel sick. I rushed out of the cabin and took pictures then put my camera back so I didn't lose it or just incase the rain decided to make an appearance on the ocean. Of course, it rained then came out these gorgeous rainbows so I rushed in the cabin to get my camera again. What was I thinking? The ocean was rough, the waves threw me all around inside the cabin and I was already feeling sick. I put the camera away and we were all taking turns in the fighting chair. We would sit for 10 minutes, then rotate to the next person. I was so nervous, I had never done this before. I prayed that the fish wouldn't bite when I was in the chair. They didn't. After everyone was done, H finally went and sat in the chair and the guy was changing all the bait to fresh ones. H watched his watch and was already 2 minutes over but didn't get up just yet. On the 3rd minute, a fish was biting! The guy got it on the line, the rest of us reeled in the others and H started reeling it in. After awhile of fighting with this fish, H let another man try to reel it in for a bit, then another guy, then me! I reeled in a blue marlin, almost all the way to the boat! My arms were exhausted so I gave up and another guy sat down to try. He didn't last very long and then H took the reel again. H got the fish to the boat! We had anywhere from a 200-300 pound blue marlin on our line. By far, one of the hardest things I've ever done but truly an amazing experience. They don't take them out of the water so we had to take our pictures quick off the side of the boat and they released the fish. Once we all settled down and started moving again, I was feeling so sick. H even got a little sick and he had done this before. We sat in the corner with another guy who was feeding the fish multiple times. I was glad I didn't puke though. By the time we were almost back in, I felt a little better but definitely ready to get off the boat. Once we were off the boat, we decided to head to the shops and go look for my pandora bracelet that we decided to start during our honeymoon. We went to a shop and they only had one style bracelet, the one with the gold clasp which was $365 just for the bracelet! H was going to buy it until we looked in the little book and saw the all silver one was only $65. But of course, they didn't have it. They also didn't have the charm I really wanted, which was a dangle anchor, similar to Royal Caribbean's logo so we left. We took the ferry to the other side of town to check over there but the selection was even worse. We were hungry at this point and there was only one restaurant in the shopping center that looked pretty crowded so we headed back to the ship and ate lunch in the Windjammer, as usual. After lunch, it was time to lay down and take a nap to get rid of the sick feeling in my stomach. I certainly felt better after that. But we had a great time on the island and I learned that I will never go deep sea fishing again but I can mark it off my bucket list :)
Welcome to Saint Lucia!
Ready to get on the boat
Our boat was called the Hack Attack... no pun intended
Honeymooners on the boat in St. Lucia
rainbow!
The famous Pitons. That means boobs, by the way.
Sailors are pigs.
Reeling in the fish!
The beast
Look how big it is!
Goodbye St. Lucia
