St. Pierre,

Martinique
14.45.555N
61.10.660W

Our sail started off slow but ended up rather exhilarating.

We hoisted our anchors at 7 am and made our way out of Portsmouth, Dominica. It was a long open harbor and took almost a half hour just to leave. We turned and either hoisted or unfurled our main sails and then returned to our course for leaving.

We motored out a ways and then slowed to see what the wind was doing. Then we continued our motoring for the next couple of hours. Once, before we reached the end of the island, the winds teased us and we unfurled our jib and shut off the engine. We sailed along briskly for about a half hour and then it was back to motoring as the on shore breeze was stronger than the trades and made for a stalemate where we were located.

We saw a couple of dolphins, the first for quite some time now and we had a stowaway for a short time hiding on one of our back seats protected by a fender.

Near the southern end of Dominica, we could see wind on the water. The rest of our sail was between 6-8kts all the way to Martinique. Of course, Orpailleur left us in their wake. We used the autopilot for most of the way but towards the end we each took a turn at hand steering and made some noticeable headway on Gerry/Nicky. For the briefest of times, we played who goes where with another boat approaching on a collision course with us. Dale was on the wheel but I saw the boat under our jib. The other guy was on a starboard tack, so Dale turned up wind. The other boat must not have thought that we were going to turn in time so he turned in the same direction, then we all did it again in the opposite direction. Then one more time just for the sheer terror of it. Finally, we passed starboard to starboard and with a respectable amount of space between us.

As we approached the harbor in St. Pierre, a large black cloud passed over the town and out to where we were. We slowed our speed and waited for the rain to pass. On our previous trip down island, I had placed a waypoint near where we needed to go. Today, it was easy to just turn on the autopilot and plug in the waypoint and slowly make our way into the anchorage while keeping a sharp lookout for any other boats doing the same thing.

We reached our waypoint as the rain subsided. We still had about another half mile to travel but at least the rain was gone. We entered the anchorage and remembered that you were practically on the beach before you ever reached anchoring depths. Our first attempt Dale wasn’t comfortable with. Our second left me anxious about being too close to another boat, we finally circled around and dropped a 3rd time just a little behind where our second attempt was so that we settled behind the boat I was concerned about. Gerry & Nicky anchored somewhere near where we tried the first time. They didn’t drag but Gerry said that he wasn’t real comfortable about the feel of it either and that they would stay where they were.

We finished our day with a quick dinner of stuffed baked potatoes. I had already finished cooking when the microwave just turned off. At first I thought that because I had left the door open, the light turned off automatically after a period of time. When I saw that the whole oven had turned off, I thought of a circuit breaker tripping. When that wasn’t the case, I called my handy, dandy repair man who said that he’d try to fit me into his schedule tomorrow sometime.
Our biggest concern right now is: how do we get the dang thing out so that he can look at it. It’s definitely a project that needs the light of day to shed some light on the situation.

There’s always fun in the sun.