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March 14 - March 16, 2010: From Martinique to Les Saintes
March 14
We left after a nice breakfast, knowing that we would not have a long way to go. The wind was such that we finally could sail. We stayed outside le Rocher du Diamant this time and went out so that, with one tack, we could get to St. Pierre. It was not always fast but it was beautiful. And so we went comfortably, happily, passed the "rock". We arrived at St. Pierre, the wind was fairly strong by that time. We anchored close to shore for best protection, made water, did laundry. It was so windy that, the bedsheets were barely out, they were dry and could be put back on our beds - amazing.
After a while, a very beautiful old-fashioned sloop had anchored close to us - Canadian flag flying. The skipper came by to ask whether the boat was still Dietmar's and whether he was aboard. Dietmar came out. Larry Pringle on Pasha had taken part in the Carib 1500 regatta a few years ago. He and his wife decided to leave the boat int he Caribbean over the summer and sail there during the winter months. Dietmar invited them for drinks. Larry and Pat were very nice and we had a great time. They left to go out for dinner. It was Larry's birthday the next day.
We went to bed early as we wanted to leave at a decent hour to get to Dominica.
March 15
We left early for Dominica - with great wind conditions. It was terrific. As we approached the passage between Martinique and Dominica, the wind piped up to around 20+ knots true - fantastic. For a while, I steered, because the waves were such that the autopilot did not really like it. Jerome was busy with another customer. So he sent someone else to assign a mooring to us. Dietmar dove to check it out - after Martin, our helper, had already left. He found that the rope holding the mooring was already frayed. So we called Jerome to come to discuss something we did not want to discuss over the air. He came very shortly thereafter and assigned us a brandnew mooring. Now we were all happy and swam for a while before getting ready to go to the Blue Lagoon for drinks, internet, and some more accra. Larry and Pat who had arrived shortly after us joined us there.
March 16
Jerome came by to bring us ice and to have me take pictures of him on his boat. We accomplished it all and were underway at an early hour. On the way - mostly motoring because there was virtually no wind - we saw a sunfish and Dietmar saw a huge fin sticking out of the water. He thinks it was a gigantic shark. We missed it. For that matter he missed the sunfish. We entered Les Saintes, anchored in a perfect and fairly quiet spot. Larry and Pat came quite a few hours after we had anchored, swam etc. They invited us for drinks to their boat. We went there, admired the boat (beautiful, but too small down below, very narrow).
We left early, had dinner and went to bed early because we wanted to leave around 5:30 a.m. the next morning. The trip to Montserrat was quite long - 70 nm.
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