Headed south through the volcanoes…and cricket on the horizon!

Jul 7

After the final unfortunate day in St. Marteen, we set sail to head south in our quest to keep moving to get south and out of the Hurricane zones.

We had a beautiful sail south from the island past some islands that we wished we had time to stop at – Saba, Montserrat (which is an active smoking volcano still after it erupted a few years ago – you can see the landslides and where the lava flowed down the mountain side as we sailed past. We got to St Kitts and Nevis just at sunset and took a mooring ball near the bach on Nevis for the night. We didn’t go ashore as we hadn’t checked into the island. We headed off extremely early the next morning at first light, for a longer day and night sail past Guadeloupe Dominica and finally ended up in Martinique the next day, at St Pierre Harbor. We were trying to get used to the fairly funky weather that you can get between islands. When sailing behind the island, for the most part you get low winds and calm seas . However for some of these islands, where there is a space between two high mountains, the winds can funnel down the side of the valleys and create some really vicious squalls! Our passage as we left Guadeloupe for Dominica was pretty fast and hairy!

As we came into the beautiful town of St Pierre in Martinique, it was a weekend so the town felt very peaceful, not everything was open as it was siesta time  so we had a French beer at a traditional looking street bar there after we had checked in and then headed back to the boat with some more French provisions which is awesome.

We spent some days there working, doing school and exploring. The island of Martinique was pretty much destroyed in a volcano in 1917 which amazing there is photographic evidence of as well. There is a small museum on the island sharing remnants of things they found – the only known survivor of the town was actually a prisoner who was in the prison at the time in solitary confinement – how he survived I don’t know having seen the tiny cell he was in…..! There were some beautiful theatre buildings’ that survived (or parts of them) and a list in the museum of those confirmed that had died in the town. There were boats in the harbor ( that had come from Britain and France doing sugar cane transports etc.!) and taking rum to trade – some of which escaped but some of which are still in the bottom of the bay and make good diving sites these days. 

Another day we visited the superb Martinique Zoo. Set in the ruins of the old rum distillery, it looked like a botanical garden, but had some cool animals to boot! We saw monkeys, huge tortoises, butterflies, peacocks, a black panther, a pair of mating cougars (or pumas – same thing apparently!?) flamingoes, and some glorious and very camera proud parrots waiting to be Insta’d  . We then headed back to the totally black sand beach as we waited for a lift home.

It was then time to head to St Lucia. We had one of our most sporting, roughest (in my opinion) passages from the bottom of Martinique. It wasn’t just a compression zone we went through – we had 8ft seas on the beam and 25 to 30 knots. We were flying. 11.5kn at some points. A little fast for me although the boat loved it, as did Pete.

We got to Rodney Bay Marina around lunch – beautiful marina, really well serviced by stores/ a selection of restaurants and services. We spent a few days in the Marina doing jobs – Pete and I fitted a new additional solar panel onto the hard top roof to compensate for the new Dometic freezer we have as well as our new favorite appliance on board – an ice maker! Annabelle – as part of an Engineering project that she needed to do, then made a pull-out shelf for the freezer to sit on which has been great. It was wired in with Pete’s help and now runs on the equivalent of a cigarette lighter – literally – to power it.

Pete was then in the US for around a week, so we played and explored locally. We went to the local beach and the kids sailed the Tiwal around the Bay. When he came back we headed to the Pitons for the weekend which is the view that St Lucia is synonymous with. Two towering volcanic plugs that come right out the sea next to the anchorage. St Lucia 6 years ago was a pretty rough place, but it really has felt like that was all in the past and the baddy guys are gone. We had an amazing Indian Roti meal at Soufriere overlooking the Bay.

The next morning, we decided to tackle some more boat work – changing the zinc anodes that protect the bottom of our boat from being eaten in its salty home. Zinc anodes are put near the propeller and sail drive that power the boat, the idea being that they are a metal that corrodes more easily than the material that the important (and expensive) boat parts are made of, so they are sacrificial to that. Some learnings for us:

· Don’t try to do this sort of job in 40 ft of water (no matter how clear it was). When you drop a tool you can’t go get it (as we can’t free dive that deeply!).

· Do it with scuba gear on. Trying to hold your breath whilst screwing in an anode is pretty hard. We lost three to the bottom as we struggled to coordinate our breathing patterns!

After we finished, we headed a couple of miles north to Marigot Bay, a protected hurricane hole of a bay halfway up St Lucia. We got a good deal on a couple of nights, some all-inclusive passes into the adjacent resort and it being Father’s Day, had a fun afternoon in the pool. Then it was time to head back to the top of the Island for the T20 World Cup Cricket! We lucked out in that we got to see England West Indies (basically at the West Indies home ground) - this was the Super 8 stage (like quarter finals) so when we booked the tickets we didn’t know who we would get.

The game was at 8pm, and when we arrived it was just like a party. Barmy Army in one corner of the mound which was where we were standing, local kettle drums and trumpets for the home crowd. What a fun atmosphere, with people from all nations supporting and having fun!