16 May 2011 Anse A L’Ane, Martinique
We had another night of light winds with drizzle, so we had to keep the hatches closed for most of the time - very hot and sweaty. I’ve come up with a cunning plan to have a big piece of Sunbrella (canvas) zipped onto the bimini at night that will cover the hatch into the aft cabin. It should allow us to keep the hatches open in the rain and as an added bonus will act as a big wind scoop directing air into the hatch - another job for Glenys.
I’m still doing exercises every morning and reached 60 press-ups today (3 * 20). I think that it’s making a difference to my beer belly. However, I’ve had to stop doing pull-ups because I’ve pulled a muscle in my left forearm.
We caught the ferry from Anse A L’Ane to Fort de France and wandered around the town. The first stop was the tourist office to get a street map - typical of the French, the tourist office is very difficult to find and the door is shut, so it looks closed. After we had our map, it only took ten minutes of walking around before it became apparent that Glenys wanted to go into clothes shops and I obviously didn’t, so we split up for a couple of hours - this is probably the longest we’ve been apart for the last six weeks.
I wandered aimlessly for an hour, before going to the chandlers and filling in the forms to clear out of Martinique tomorrow. I then went and sat in the park and read a book for half an hour. I met Glenys at midday who had only managed to buy one (lime green) dress. We went to KFC for lunch as most of the other places were doing “Plat de Jour” menus which we thought were too large.
We were back on the boat at two o’clock and went snorkelling by the Iles a Ramirs again. Glenys spotted another lobster, so I practised snaring it. I caught it on the third attempt, but it was only about 12 inches long (and we are in a marine park), so I let it go.
17 May 2011 Anse A L’Ane to Rodney Bay, St Lucia
It was another hot night, so we got up early and started to get ready to go to St Lucia. We left at eight o’clock and motored down the west coast, starting to sail once we had cleared the lee of the island. There were some nasty looking squalls to windward, but the rain stayed over the land and only gave us some strong 20+ knot winds for 15 minutes or so.
The trip was varied with periods of very light winds and stronger when there were squalls close. Fortunately, we didn’t get rained on at all. I messed up the navigation a little bit, heading a bit too far upwind, but this gave us a very pleasant reach along the north west coast of St Lucia into Rodney Bay.
We anchored at four o’clock and dived overboard to cool down – I’d caught the sun because I’d spent at least 30 minutes re-rigging our fishing line in the beating sun.
It was a beautiful moonlit evening, very calm with twinkling reflections on the water from the hotels and the full moon.
18 May 2011 Rodney Bay, St Lucia
It was a very pleasant night with wind coming down the hatch – I actually felt cold when I woke up. We went into the marina where I checked into customs, while Glenys took a huge bag of dirty washing to the laundry. Then we had the obligatory stroll around the chandlers, the hardware store and the supermarket. Glenys went to the bank and withdrew some money on a credit card – our debit cards have been blocked for some reason.
Back on the boat, we rang our bank and found out that they have blocked our Debit cards because we changed our bank account type. No, they can’t reactivate them, instead they arranged to send some new Debit cards to Gareth’s address and hopefully they will arrive in time for Mike to pick them up and bring them out to us.
I took the engine control panel off, to try to fix the hour meter on the tachometer. There are a lot of wires and I couldn’t see anything obvious. Now that we’ve got an Internet connection again, I “goggled” the problem and found out that it’s very common that the LCD display is intermittent – something to do with moisture – what a rubbish design. I fiddled about for three hours and couldn’t get it working.
I did some Internet research on arches for the stern – I found some photos of a nice looking one on a Hallberg Rassey 46, so I think that will be the basis for my design. I emailed the owner of the boat and asked a few questions about how it was made and fitted.
Later on in the afternoon, I went into the marina to pick up the laundry, but they were closed. So I went to the chandlers and, after a lot of prevaricating, bought a new trolling rod and reel. I also HAD to buy some fishing line, a few hooks, swivels and a nice little tackle box. So far “The Cruisers Handbook of Fishing” has cost us £320 in fishing gear…