When last we published a blog we had experienced the ‘perfect storm’ in the Pitons. From there we headed north to Rodney Bay, still on St. Lucia. We were awoken Sunday morning at 0630 by LOUD music from the beach in front of us. This lasted until 1030. It was some kind of benefit for someone or something but we thought they could have started 2 hours later and finished at noon. Well we had a couple of quiet hours and then at 1400 the music started again. This time louder, but it was coming from an area about 1.5 miles farther down the beach. It lasted well into Monday morning (0600). This music was so loud we figured there was no sense in getting off the boat in an effort to get away from it because wherever we would walk to we would probably be able to hear it even better. We spent the day on the boat.
The rest of the stay in Rodney Bay was spent doing maintenance on the boat – housekeeping, exchanging books at the book exchange, changing the oil, checking hoses etc. We did get off the boat to walk a bit through Gros Islet. This is a fishing village across the lagoon from the marina. The guide books warn not to walk there at night, but during the day it was quite peaceful. This was probably the area where the music came from on Sunday. We walked over to the north side of Pigeon Island Park to see if we could see the 10 ft swells that were forcast. We couldn't tell how high they were from the shore, but they looked high enough that we were glad we weren't sailing and there were people out surfing.
Finally November 4th arrived and the weather finally looked like it was going to be settled enough to head north again. We took on water and diesel at the marina and headed north for Martinique.
We planned on stopping at Grand Anse d’Arlet, a small village on the south east coast. We had
stopped at Anse d’Arlet with the Wards, but Griff didn’t have a chance to see much that stop because he was fixing the ‘head’. We thought we could check in at Grand Anse d’Arlet, spend the night and then walk over to Anse d’Arlet the next day, spend another night and then head up to the north end of Martinique. This was not to be. As we were starting to take our dinghy down a Customs boat came alongside and when we asked if we could check in here they said no we either had to go to Le Marin or Fort de France. They later came back to tell us that yes we could check in at one of the restaurants in Grand Anse. We got the dinghy down and headed to shore. Of course the restaurant wasn’t open so we still couldn’t check in. We decided to “yellow flag” it and leave in the morning. What “yellow flag” means is that you don’t check in, don’t put up the country’s courtesy flag, leave the yellow quarantine flag up and don’t go ashore.
The next morning we headed north to Saint Pierre. We had stopped there in 2007 on our initial sail down island. The town was unchanged, still very French. We did some provisioning there, took a short walk and then headed for Dominica the next morning.
Beautiful sailing until we got about a third of the way up the coast of Dominica. We then got to experience what people have been referring to as a lee wind. If you remember back to your elementary school science land and water heat at different rates. During the day land heats faster and the wind blows from cold to hot so you get the wind blowing onshore. That is called a lee wind in sailing because the island is then downwind of your boat. Normally the winds here blow off the islands towards the sea.
We were going to Portsmouth in the north end. While passing the capital of Roseau we saw two motor launches on our portside. As we watched them we realized that they were watching something in the water. Sure enough we saw some whales. There seemed to be two swimming beside each of the launches. We watched for a while, but then had to crank up the motor again so we could get to Portsmouth before dark.
We were looking forward to visiting Dominica again. We had enjoyed both of our previous visits. As we were coming into the bay we called Martin, the tour guide we have used on previous trips. He met us at the boat after we had anchored. I went over to customs with him while Griff ‘pulled the boat together’. We arranged for him to take our laundry and bring some fruit the next day. It is obvious that the cruising season has not yet started fully. Very few boats were in the anchorage when we arrived – maybe 10. Not all of the ‘boat boys’ were out and about. Martin was using a borrowed boat because he was just finishing painting his own.
We spent the next day on the boat just doing odd jobs because again we were ‘serenaded’ with music from the beach until 0600. We had forgotten how long lasting and loud the beach music can be. In Grenada we didn’t have that problem. Martin brought us the fruit we ordered and then some. He brought 5 oranges, 6 grapefruit, a hand of bananas, 1 avocado, 2 papayas and a bag of lettuce plus a bouquet of flowers and a bunch of rosemary. For all this he charged $12EC ($1US=$2.68EC).
We discussed what we wanted to do on the island and decided that there wasn’t anything more we really wanted to do. We talked about how going back to a place you had enjoyed before is not necessarily a good thing. Expectations are higher and it is disappointing when not met. Last time we were here we interacted with a lot of the other cruisers and this time there weren’t other cruisers around.
We also had to decide where we were heading from here. Do we continue north up the island chain or do we head west for the Virgin Islands? We finally decided to head north to Nevis and St. Kitts. Again those were two islands that we really enjoyed and there were other things we wanted to see and do there. After that we planned to head farther north to Anguilla, an island we hadn’t seen yet.
Griff will do the next portion of the ongoing saga of Mystic Journey.
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