Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The Grenadines

After our departure from St Lucia we had 12 days to reach Grenada before Fred needed to catch his return flight to the states.  We chose to give St Vincent a pass and go straight to Bequia.  Some cruisers still stop at St Vincent, and I hear it is supposed to be a nice island, but theft has become such a big problem there we chose to pass it by and not deal with the hassle.  The options there are to always leave someone on your boat or hire someone to sit on your boat while you are ashore.  The island doesn’t seem to be trying very hard to stop the crime, so we chose to not support them.  I have talked to some cruisers who stopped there and didn’t experience any trouble at all.. you just never know.

            We stopped at Bequia for a couple of days and then heard our first tropical cyclone warning of the season.  A 60% chance for a formation over the next 48 hours.  Depending on if a tropical storm / hurricane would form we may need to be ready to change our plans and run straight down to Grenada.  As it turned out, the chances of formation decreased everyday until it just fizzled out and our plans were not hindered.
            We continued to buzz through the islands:  Canouan, Mayreau, Tobago Cays, Union Island, Carriacou and then to Grenada.  We spent long enough on each island to sample the town, food and see what was beneath the water.  Mostly it was a very enjoyable trip and a great time hanging out with Fred, who was not only great to hang out with but was excellent at cleaning the galley!  We ended the trip with Fred in Mt Harman Bay, which was to be our home for the next four months.

Friday, June 11, 2010

St Lucia

The new Avon dingy
     I would like to tell you all about the island of St Lucia, but we hardly saw any of it.  We arrived in St Lucia, after a short sail down from Martinique.  With ten days till we picked up our guest and continued on south we thought there would be plenty of time to explore the island.  We were wrong; it was just enough to deal with a leaking dingy and explore the marina.
      Shortly after arriving at Rodney Bay we heard over the local cruisers net that Rodney Bay Marina was hosting a cruisers BBQ that included two free nights in the marina on Friday and Saturday.  Whoo hooo!!! Free marina nights… no way we were going to pass that up, and since the marina was only $25 USD a night we opted to go in a day early.
 As it turned out that was a slightly fortuitous decision as we discovered a leak in our Achilles inflatable dingy on Wednesday evening.  Since we already planned to go into the marina Thursday that seemed to be sufficient time to patch it and allow the glue to dry before moving back out to the anchorage on Sunday.  It sounded like a nice plan anyway, and even seemed to go okay, until IB inflated the “repaired” dingy on Saturday.  His patch, that was in the seam held just fine but a new spot busted out along the seam.  Plan B consisted of just buying a new dingy.  Since we had our davits installed in Florida we had discussed the benefits of a rigid bottom dingy, one less place to worry about leaks, and better performance.  So we asked around for 10’ rigid bottom dingys but there were none to be had. .. onto plan C:  have the dingy professionally repaired. The Liferaft & Inflatable Center located right in the lagoon would be able to look at it on Monday and hopefully have it repaired and be on our way mid week.  It sounded like a good plan, but once they had a chance to inspect it, the entire seam was giving out.  They suspected it was the result of a bad batch of glue, and would cost more than replacing the dingy to repair it.  Since the dingy was only about a year old this was not happy news.  We took pictures and contacted the warranty department of Achilles, who actually did a good job of sending us a new replacement dingy, only the process took longer than we had at the time and was not completed until we were in Grenada.  The good news was that the Liferaft & Inflatable Center also sold dingys and had just what we were looking for in stock in their warehouse.  An Avon 310 Lite Rib, they drove IB to the warehouse and customs to complete the purchase. With our pockets a little lighter, but with reliable transportation we left the marina to spend a pleasant evening with friends out in the anchorage.

Although we were not happy about our circumstances that kept us in the marina over a week we were quite happy with the marina.  Nice secure floating docks made getting on and off the boat easy, several good restaurants right at the marina as well as a pool that we frequented everyday.  For the first time on our trip we met many different cruisers that we would continue to see over the summer months.  By this point south the part time cruisers had mostly gone home, and the charter boats were not around, what we were mostly left with were those that would be spending the summer in a hurricane safe destination.
The pitons in the distance
The following day we pulled out of the anchorage and headed down to Soufriere to pick up Fred; our friend / guest / glorified mail carrier.  As soon as we knew he was planning to visit we started some Internet shopping.  All of our guests get to bring us packages; it’s much cheaper and more reliable than having things shipped. 
The night before we collected Fred we spent on a mooring near the bat caves and it was a very rough rolling night with the boat constantly beating against the mooring ball.  As soon as Fred was aboard we moved over between the pitons, two tall mountains on either side of the bay, and spent a very calm evening before heading on south the following day.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Martinique



St. Pierre and the Mt. Pelee volcano. On May 8, 1902 erupted releasing a giant fireball that destroyed the town and 12 ships at anchor in the bay. Only two people survived. Several minor eruptions and grumblings from the volcano in the preceding weeks had been ignored resulting in the deaths of nearly 29,933 people. As the town was rebuilt they tried to preserve a part of the old buildings in the new structure. The ships still rest at the bottom of the sea and are visited by divers. Most are at a depth greater than 100 ft. Most of the bay is very deep leaving a narrow shelf near the town dock for anchoring.

Canal de Beauregard. We went with our friends Shadowfax and Spirare by bus up into the mountains to the small town of St Denis. We had lunch at a small restaurant overlooking the valley full of lush greenery. After lunch, we parted ways and hiked down the road to the start of the canal walk as our friends went to catch the bus back to town. IB was intent on walking the canal, I was much more reluctant but agreed to go along. The guidebook warns that you should be comfortable with heights to walk along the 18-inch wide canal wall. Not quite so comfortable with heights, I have a good idea of what I’ve gotten myself into as IB tries to assure me the areas will high drops by the wall are only a few feet long, I didn’t believe him. I was right. The walk starts off easy as it meanders through a tunnel, but we do eventually get to the drop-offs, they are long sections and a long ways down. The view is breathtaking… if you can manage to look. I don’t think I saw anything but the wall and my feet, until I took that last step off the canal, and started breathing again.

The following morning we had planned to hike to the top of Mt. Pelee, however as we looked up toward the volcano all that could be seen were the clouds surrounding it. As we drank our coffee and contemplated what to do, the winds began to shift to the WSW, blowing us toward shore and blowing in waves. That made our decision for us and we pulled up anchor and headed south to Fort de France.

Fort de France may have been a nice place to see, stores to actually go shopping, but as it was we arrived on Saturday afternoon. The one inconvenient thing about French islands are the opening times for businesses. Weekends are not a time they like to open, just forget about Sunday, I think you are really supposed to stay home and rest then. And restaurants… well I’m still trying to figure out their hours, I think you are supposed to eat dinner after 9 at night. We enjoyed the evening on the boat in a calm anchorage and headed on south the next day.

On our way to Le Marin, we made a brief stop at Anse Noir where the guidebook claims there is really good snorkeling. Really good is really relative. There were certainly some creatures to see, some coral alive and a wall, just a little too deep for snorkeling, but it was definitely a big whatever. Just after pulling into the anchorage we spotted our friends on Elsyium.

Our one-day in Le Marin was spent getting checked out at customs, spending some time with our friends and making a huge mistake we wouldn’t realize for several days yet and would regret for islands to come. Having been hop-scotching down the French Islands we got quite comfortable with good cheese, inexpensive wine and a variety of other goodies from the grocery. Somehow we didn’t stop and think that this was our last French Island and we chose not to go to the grocery store. In two days we will realize that the great selection of really good wine at really cheap prices does not exist after Martinique. The great deli cheese and fresh goat cheese .. forget it. We won’t even talk about olive oil. We’ll just mark this down as cruising lesson #243.