20 January 2012 Rodney Bay, St Lucia
I woke up this morning with an urge to plan our future route around the world. I spent the whole morning pouring over a book that Brett and Craig bought me for Christmas called “World Cruising Routes.” I think that we’ll spend Christmas 2012 in Cuba, 2013 in Ecuador, 2014 in Mexico, 2015 in New Zealand, 2016 in the Far East, 2017 in South Africa and Christmas 2018 back in Grenada – subject to whims and waves of course.
After lunch, I went into the marina and the sail maker has now removed the sail from its bag and says that we can pick it up tomorrow at nine o’clock. I went back to the boat all excited and did a few jobs getting ready for leaving in the morning. Our plan is to spend the next four days beating upwind to Les Saintes, where we can chill out in the knowledge that Antigua is only a day’s sail away.
We went out for a meal at the small restaurant on Pigeon Island with “Celebration”, Jammin”, “Panchita” and Hakan and Anna from “Unicorn” – we drank too much rum punch.
21 January 2012 Rodney Bay to St Anne, Martinique
I picked up the sail at nine o'clock. He’s re-stitched the whole length of the sacrificial strip on the foot and leech - amazingly it only cost me £80.
I cleared out and rushed back to Alba. We soon had the sail back on, the outboard lifted on deck and the dinghy stored on the davits, so we were able to leave by half past ten.
It was very lumpy in the tidal race as we rounded the corner of the island, but we powered our way through the steep waves and settled down to another day of beating to windward. It wasn’t too bad with 20-25 knot winds and we sailed fine for a couple of hours. By the time that we’d crossed half way across to Martinique, we’d been pushed down wind/down current by two miles, so we turned the engine on and motor-sailed for the last couple of hours
We went into the anchorage in Le Marin and dinghied ashore to the supermarket to buy provisions ready for the arrival of Andy and family in a couple of weeks’ time. We loaded an impressive stack of drinks into the dinghy – 16 litres of orange juice, 15 litres of beer, and 42 litres of red wine in boxes. I’m not saying that they drink a lot, but…
As soon as we’d loaded the shopping on the boat, we went to around to the anchorage at St Anne and invited Rod and Mary from “Sheer Tenacity” over for drinks. Being in a French island, we had Moules Meunieres, Pain and Vin Rouge for dinner.
22 January 2012 St Anne to St Pierre, Martinique
We left at half past eight and had a terrific sail to Diamond Rock. It was very nice to be going downwind again even if it was only for a couple of hours.
Once around the corner of the island, the wind gradually came more on the nose and we had an exciting close reach across the Fort De France bay with winds gusting up to 25 knots pushing us along at over seven knots for a while. As we came into the lee of the mountains at the north end of Martinique, the wind dropped from 20 knots to zero in 100 metres. We switched on the engine and motored the rest of the way. We had such a fast journey, that we nearly went straight past St Pierre – the autopilot was on; I was reading and Glenys wasn’t paying attention.
We anchored off the town and went ashore to have a look around. St Pierre is an fascinating place. Around 1900, it was the largest city in Martinique and a major port, handling goods bound for St Lucia, Dominica and Guadeloupe. In 1902, the volcano to the north east of the town erupted and a pyroclastic cloud of hot gas and ash rushed down and engulfed the town. Out of the 30,000 inhabitants and the many ships at anchor, only two people survived. One was a prisoner in the poorly ventilated jail and another guy lived on the edge of town and was lucky.
The town has preserved many of the remains of the original buildings including the opera house and the jail next door, so it’s interesting to walk around.
Back on the boat we re-anchored on the other side of the pier because some Finnish guy had anchored ridiculously close to us. Alan and April from “Moody Blue” kindly invited us over for a beer.
23 January 2012 St Pierre to Rupert Bay, Dominica
The alarm went off at half past six – groan! We motored up coast of Martinique and then had a fast, bouncy, close reach doing seven knots across the 30 mile passage to Dominica. Once in the lee of the island the wind became fickle – sometimes no wind and sometimes katabatic winds of over 30 knots. We eventually gave up trying to sail and motor-sailed.
We were aiming to get to the anchorage at Castaways Hotel, but we arrived there at two o’clock, so we continued up to Prince Rupert Bay, which was quite busy. It’s a huge bay, but everyone crowds into one corner to escape the swell that hooks around the headland.
We were very tired after sailing for 60 miles and found it difficult to think never mind trying to anchor among yachts and moorings. It took us twenty minutes consisting of three, bad tempered attempts before we were settled - there’s coral in some places, but we eventually found a nice sandy patch in six metres depth and cracked open a nice cold beer.
The big attraction here is to go hiking inland to waterfalls or being rowed up the nearby Indian River. Fifteen years ago we were inundated by boat boys aggressively selling trips, but it seems very relaxed now with only a couple of boat boys turning up.
Glenys rustled up King Prawns in Garlic for dinner and we collapsed into bed early.
24 January 2012 Rupert Bay to Terre D’En Haut, Iles des Saintes
We dragged ourselves out of bed at eight o’clock and got ready to leave, but a big rain system came over the bay, so we hung around for an hour. There was no rush it’s only 20 miles to the Saintes.
It was a strange sail - a close reach with periods of 10 knots winds and gusts of 25 knots as bands of cloud and rain showers passed by us. At one point, we lost sight of Iles des Saintes completely as a rain shower engulfed the islands. Fortunately, we had blue skies and fluffy white clouds as we negotiated our way past small rocky islands towards the main town of Bourg des Saintes.
The town council has installed a huge number of moorings around the anchorages and it’s illegal to anchor unless there are no moorings available. They’re fairly reasonable though – only costing us 11 Euros per night. We went ashore and found that the customs has moved from the town hall to a cyber café. It’s a self-service computer system like they have in Martinique and there are no checking-in fees. While we were there we paid for two nights mooring.
Bourg des Saintes is a quaint little town with very narrow streets and lots of little souvenir shops and boutiques. We wandered around looking for a boulangerie, but they’d all run out of bread – no nice baguette tonight...
We went back to the boat and chilled out for the remainder of the afternoon – four days of sailing upwind has left us weary.
25 January 2012 Terre D’En Haut, Iles des Saintes
It was a horrible night with the boat pitching up and down because this anchorage is so exposed to the north-east swell.
We went for a walk up to Fort Napoleon. This is a beautifully restored 19th century fort which houses a museum. Most of the exhibits are about the Battle of the Saintes which took place in 1782. The English fleet under Admiral Rodney destroyed the French fleet in a massive sea battle. It’s an interesting place to visit.
We walked down the hill and headed across the island aiming for a beach. On the way, we came across a notice board with a map of a walk in the north part of the island. Not able to ignore a path, we hiked up a steep hill and eventually ended up walking for two hours giving us fantastic view of the northern bays and sea cliffs. We ended up on the beach in the Baye de Marigot where we stopped in a restaurant and had a lovely three course lunch.
Back in town, we called in at the mooring office and paid for another couple of days. Our intention was to go over to the Ilet a Cabrit which should be better protected, but the guy at the mooring office said that the moorings were all taken. The sea state didn’t look too bad when we got back to the boat so we decided to stay put.
Of course the wind dropped in the evening and the bloody swell came rolling in, making us rock and roll again – this anchorage is pants.