Sailing, Sailing................

Griff's last blog left us heading to sea again. Since then we have sailed to Martinique and back. No WiFi on the boat there and the keyboards ashore were French so we decided to wait until we were back here in Rodney Bay to do the blog. French keyboards are different. You have to shift to get numbers and some of our common punctuation marks. As well the letters are arranged differently. For those of you that we did send emails to that explains the qnd's and the e;qils.

A little about the anchorage. We were anchored off St. Anne next to Don and Heather on ASSEANCE a boat from Canada that we had met in Dominica. St. Anne is a quiet little village. One noticable thing about it is the church and shrine on the hill above the village. The church is the first thing you see as you walk up from the dock and the shrine is at the end of a zig-zag path that is very noticable from the boat because it has a white wall that follows both sides of the path with what looked like a shrine at each point of the zig-zag. What little I know about the Catholic religion I figure the path must have been a walk along the Stations of the Cross. We did not walk up the path. We spent an afternoon exploring the rest of the village and walking along the beach. On one end of the beach is a Club Med which of coarse does not allow non-guests onto its premises. At the other end of the village is a series of beaches that are connected by a hiking trail. We walked along part of the trail passing a 'water park' one of the hotels has in place. It consisted of trampolines, slides and water volleyball court. It was easy to picture the grandkids having fun there.

The other area we spent time in was Le Marin. This is another village/marina area about a 1/2 dinghy ride away. It is a huge marina, anchorage, and mooring field. We have not run across so many boats in one area before. Martinique is a province of France and the atmosphere there is more European than Caribbean. You can still get the island tourist gifts and vegetables, but you can also buy delicious French bread, cheeses and wine.

Now about the sailing. It was great to be on the move again. We had good winds both days and were able to sail with the motor turned off. Griff was in his glory! I am still getting over my uneasiness with being heeled over, but it is getting better. The sail from St. Lucia to Martinique was uneventful - winds around 15 knots and seas about 6 feet over the starboard bow. We averaged around 6.5 knots most of the way. When we were about an hour away we realized that the waypoint we were headed to was west of St. Anne, the harbour we wanted to anchor in. That meant we had to turn more into the wind and lost speed so that last hour we had the motor on. I will admit it was my error in not letting Griff know earlier where the waypoint was in relation to the harbour and not realizing that we would have been better turning earlier so we would not lose the wind. Oh well!!! Next time I'll know better. We got anchored with no incidents.

Our sail from Martinique was not quite as uneventful. At 0830 we lifted anchor and started the voyage back to St. Lucia. The first event occurred as Griff was hoisting the mainsail. He was having a difficult time, as if the sail was caught on something. We finally realized that the halyard, the rope used to pull up the sail, was tangled around the lazy jacks, the lines that run up from the boom to the top of the mast and keep the mainsail in line when it is being lowered. So we lowered the main and started all over, this time with no problems. So out of the harbour we sailed with one boat slightly ahead of us off our port bow.

Next event - When we left the anchorage the wind was about 10 knots and the seas we less than 3 feet. As we passed the end of the island the wind and seas increased. We were expecting that because it is a normal occurrance when you come to the end of an island and enter 'open' water. However, to compound things, we also had a squall hit us. This also causes an increase in wind speed as well as rain. The wind picked up to 25 knots and the seas were now 8 - 9 feet. Both were coming from the east which, because we were travelling SSE, meant they were coming over our port side. Mystic Journey was rocking and rolling and I headed for the Gravol. We both put on our lifejackets and tethers.

Next event - As the wind, seas, and rain were diminishing I happened to notice that our boat hook, which we have tied to the toerail at the bow, had worked its way over the toerail and was now hanging outside the boat - a sure way to lose the boat hook. Off Griff went to remedy the situation by bringing the boat hook into the cockpit. Even though the seas had settled a bit, Griff still was a 'little' on the wetside when he got back to the cockpit (Griff here - while I was up there a large wave came up over the bow and hit me. I lost my footing and both my legs went over the side - luckily my body was on the right side of the lifeline - don't tell Cheryl!!).

The rest of the trip was uneventful except for briefly altering course to make way for a couple of boats heading in the opposite direction. Finally we could see Rodney Bay and were on course according to the GPS and chartplotter. Both of us were looking at the landmarks and chose which point in the distance we should be heading towards. Things didn't quite look like I remembered the entrance to Rodney Bay. Down to look at the chart plotter and change the setting to closer in. Sure enough the point we had chosen was the backside of Pigeon Island not the point of land on the other side of the bay. Slight adjustment in course and we were headed the right way again. It was interesting to see Pigeon Island from the other side. That was the side of the park that we had looked out from when we visited it with Jason, Amelia and Alex. Anchoring in the bay was uneventful and we were settled in by 1330.

We had been going to go in to fill up with water as it had not been available when we left for Martinique but decided with the wind about 18 kts when we arrived, that we would wait for a calmer time - it can be awkward pulling up to a dock with the wind blowing hard like that. So here we are, waiting for our next crew members, Judy and Ivor, to come in on Sunday. Maybe one more blog before then - if we do anything besides clean the boat (Griff here - and fix things - have to pick up a foot pump for the saltwater galley pump - never ends!!!)