29 July Leaving St Laurent

Depth and current are the influencing factors on the best time to leave St Laurent and make the trip back to the sea.

Today's HW at St Laurent was at 7.00am, sun rise 06.30 and HW at Les Hatte 07.30am. Meaning if we dropped our line at 6am we'd have the first light of day and be at the shallowest part of the river where outflow meets the sea at half falling tide.

Pre dawn is my favourite time of day; it's a new start, quiet. This was a beautiful morning without a ripple on the water as we slipped away down stream. For the first 2 hours / ten miles there was a knot of current against us. But for the last two hours we had up to 3 knots with us. The stream was fast as we raced out in to the sea, past channel marker leaning over in the current. The journey took us four hours from mooring to safe water mark.

As we motoring down the river we asked ourselves if the time and effort of a 50nm round trip up the river was worth it to see visit a scruffy town with two days worth of things to do (prison and market)? I would say no. It's not wonderful, not a 'must see' in my personal bucket list whereas I rated our visit to Ils du Salut highly. Definitely recommended. However there was a redeeming factor for St Laurent. Being self confessed gourmands the Super U store was The Redeeming Factor. Where would we next be able to buy all those naughty, wonderful French foods and French wines at cheap prices?

So it's good bye to St Laurent du Maroni, French Guiana and good bye to South America. Next stop Grenada.