St. Martin to Dominica
3/14 - Arrived at Simpson Bay on the Dutch side of St. Martin right on schedule, circled the outer harbor a number of times getting ready to enter the inner harbor lagoon (taking in jack lines and putting out dock lines and fenders) - lots of large vessels, sail and power, on anchor in the outer harbor, and entered the inner harbor when the swing bridge over the entrance opened right on schedule. Unlike some places we’ve been, bridge tender was spot on in answering the radio and providing requested information. Lagoon is huge and chocked full of marinas with megayachts (there’s also a further inner lagoon - really huge - that has to be entered through a bascule bridge where many “lesser” vessels anchor. We’re led to our slip at the Port De Plaisance Marina by a tender and safely tie up with a broadside push from the tender. As with the VIs, this island was devastated by the 2017 hurricanes and everything is under reconstruction. We were told that over 1,000 vessels were damaged in the lagoon during the hurricanes and had to be removed. If I had known then what I know now, I would not have stayed in this marina. Because it is under reconstruction (it’s huge covering a really, really large area, the bathroom facilities that we would have used are unavailable and the ones remaining are so far away that it is totally impractical to try to use them-I mean, REALLY far away. The wi-fi is equally inadequate and the women manning the desks at the office are pleasant but of no use whatsoever. Nonetheless, the dock is adequate, power is easy to hook up to and we get settled. We’re exhausted from the overnight, but take a taxi to “town” to check in with customs and immigration. After we do we eat lunch at a small local restaurant featuring Caribbean cuisine recommended to us by our taxi driver called “Nick’s” and we rent a car. Restuarant was very good and reasonable. We go back to the boat and chill for the rest of the afternoon, although I do replace the main batten that came out of it’s pocket when we sailed over and luckily wound up on deck and was retrieved. That’s the second time that has happened. The first time was on the trip from Spanish Wells to St. Thomas. I need to start to inspect them every time I put the main up and look to see what I can do to avoid that from happening. One day we’ll lose one and it won’t be easy to replace.
3/15 - We get off the boat by 10:00 a.m. and spend the day touring the island with our car. Unlike the VIs we drive on the “right” side of the road here, so it’s easier. Roads are narrow and not in great shape but there’s lots and lots of traffic in the towns. Everyone is very courteous about letting cars into traffic, unlike NYC for example. When we drive around old Philipsburg we finally get to the “high-end” stores, but they’re hidden on a very narrow cobblestone winding road, very unlike what I remember in St. Thomas for example. Anyway, we’re not interested in them so we continue on. Island is very mountainous and very, very arid, at least at this time of year. There are some spectacular views, but hardly any places to pull over to take pictures. We do pretty much a “circumnavigation” of the Island and stop at the village/town of Grand Case on the French side of St. Martin for lunch. It’s on same side of St. Martin as Simpson Bay on the West Coast. Most everything is still under reconstruction and there isn’t much there, but we stumble upon a great place. The restaurant is called Nice SXM (SXM is short for “St. Martin”). It’s right on the Bay, which is large, at this time calm, and absolutely beautiful. It’s run by a French couple, Patrick and Myriam, and offers Tapas and real French Bistro food. I ask Myriam who doesn’t speak much English if she has a Sauvignon Blanc that isn’t from New Zealand or Chile and she says no, but that she has a Chardonnay. Patrick, whose English is a little better comes over and offers us a French white that he recommends called Quincy. We don’t know it but accept his recommendation. Turns out Quincy is the name of the vineyard or distributor and it is indeed a Sauvignon Blanc and very nice. Kryss has Duck Leg Confit and I have “laminated rabbit” (turns out to be like a rabbit pot pie) and both are delicious. To finish Kryss has homemade caramel ice cream and I have espresso (Patrick had never seen anyone put a lemon rind in espresso). All in all a delightful experience and I’m sorry that we didn’t moor our boat in Grand Case Bay. If I came back I would, at least for a couple of nights. We drive back to the boat and have a quiet evening, having covered at least 80% of the driveable roads that day.
3/16 - We take a little walk to look for the pool and 7 tennis courts that the marina website says it has (G-d forbid the ladies at the office would have told us what they had or where it is). We find the facilities behind a new building called the Port De Plaisance Club that also has a gym, spa and high-end hair salon. I make an appoint for a much too expensive haircut (hair hasn’t been cut, except trimmed by me since end of October) and then we go to office to remind them that I’m expecting a replaement Amex card by DHL today. Then it’s off to do a little shopping and more car sightseeing around the Simpson Bay/Marigot Bay area. Generally see more and more devastation and boat “graveyards” and wind up back on the lagoon strip road near immigration where we rented the car and where most of the tourist restaurants are. We eat at another local restaurant that serves us a wonderful lunch of “specials” (Mahi and avocado salad for Kryss and Creole conch for me), and then we continue to the CarreFour, a huge supermarket to buy a few things. It has everything, but we don’t need much. Some things are strange. They had twin racks of lamb for $60 plus dollars that I bought in the VIs for $27. Anyway, we return to the boat: I get my hair cut and Kryss puts our new purchases away and we have a quiet evening. Well, not so quiet. It’s Saturday night so after dark the music starts blaring from the local clubs, but it tones down to an acceptable level after not too long and it ends by 1:00 a.m. or so.
3/17 - Tried to play tennis after Kryss came back from a drive to Town to buy new headphones for her electric piano (store closed on Sunday) but the courts were also closed at 1:00 for a music festival they were having at the Club venue. Hung around the boat and didn’t do much else.
3/18 - Went back to Town for the headphones, cleared customs/immigration for leaving tomorrow, returned our rental car, played two hours of tennis, and totally rethought our next three stops to avoid having to make the 50 mile passage to Antigua against strong head winds and seas. The stops are the same, St. Barts, then St. Kitts, then Antigua, but we’re only going to stay one night in St. Barts and one night in St. Kitts to be able to travel to Antigua in more benign conditions. Since we are going to Antigua a number of days earlier than planned and since we want to shorten the trip, will transit to Jolly Harbour at the North end and stay there a few days, before traveling over 10 miles along the West coast to a marina in Falmouth Harbor. Filled the boat with water and got ready to depart the following day.
3/19 - Got up early to make the first bridge opening to leave the lagoon at 8:30. There’s a long queue of boats waiting, including two very large vessels with chase boats attending them, one of which looks military. We’re last in the queque by choice as the boats go through the bridge when one of the chase boats approaches and tells us to wait for the military boat to pass first, which is kind of nuts, so we ignore it and exit as planned. Wind is on our nose as usual as we turn towards St. Barts, but it’s only a short trip, so no big deal and we motor over there. It’s the week of the “Bucket Regatta” and the harbor is full of these mega yacht sailboats and other megayachts. The harbor is quite deep right up until the inner harbor where there are very few moorings for boats our size (more for the megayachts) and we are resigned to anchoring in the outer harbor which has a reputation for being roilly and is generally deeper than I like to anchor in. True to what the cruising guide says, the two shallow places in the outer harbor are too packed with boats for me to have a place to anchor in depths that I like. It appears that moorings for locals have taken up most of the shallow anchoring spots. Out we move to the deeper water, which is also very, very crowded as predicted. After quite a bit of reconnoitering I pick the shallowest safest place that I can find (which is neither shallow or that safe in my mind) and I put down the anchor and after watching to see if we’re holding I add the snubber, which increases our scope significantly. Turns out I have to re-mark our chain to show 10 ft. lengths as I cannot really tell how much we have put out. Also, because of how close all the boats are, I’m not sure when I back down on the anchor to set it that it’s pulling the catenary out of the chain or the anchor is dragging. Guess you could say I’m generally uncertain and not comfortable with the situation, but there’s really no alternative so we hang out on the boat long enough for us to see that we’re not dragging, at least for the moment and put the dinghy in the water for the trip into Gustavia to check in with customs. It’s pretty bouncy, not because of wind driven waves or swells but because we’re anchored next to the entrance channel and boat traffic in and out is substantial. Dinghy trip into Gustavia is long, but perhaps not as long as the cruising guide warned about and it’s uneventful. Customs/immigration is right where the super yacht sailboats moor and they are genuinely astonishing up close. It’s worth the dinghy ride in just to see them up close. Personnel in Customs are very polite and helpful and we’re checked in and checked out for departure tomorrow early for St. Kitts. We walk around town. It’s small and not nearly as impressive as one (we actually) might assume, although it does have all of the very high-end outlet shops that one would expect. It actually reminds me somewhat of the street in St. Thomas that used to have the high-end outlets there when we used to bareboat charter there in the 80s. Frankly, not very impressive. We eat lunch at one of the bistros on the main drag (Café D’Oubli). How can a bistro in a French town not have any Sauvignon Blanc, but they don’t, although the substitute French Chardonnay is actually quite good. Food is OK, but there’s only one waitress for all of the tables and she’s a “pip”. Service is abysmally slow and everyone smokes, so second hand smoke is a problem too. When we finish Kryss gets her obligatory ice cream at a small shop (amazing how little $5 gets you in St. Barts). When we dinghy back to the boat the waves from the boat traffic are horrendous and I’m almost thrown into the water a couple of times as we are attaching the dinghy to the lines to raise it onto the davits. Kryss was right that we should have put the boarding ladder on the side away from the channel, but that would not have helped with the problems preparing the dinghy for lifting out of the water. It’s late; it’s been a long day; and we ate late, so we hang out and go to bed without dinner. I still don’t trust the anchor in this deep water on what I consider short scope so I sleep with my clothes on and one eye open to deal with any dragging that might occur.
3/20 - Up before 6:00 a.m. to get ready to leave for St. Kitts, and we’re underway by 6:30. We put the sails up after we clear Pain Du Sucre, one of the little islands in the mouth of the harbor, and off we go to St. Kitts on a close reach in moderate winds. Saba is off to our starboard with it’s peak in the clouds. Seems like ever since we left St. Croix we’re been seeing Saba. Check it out on the Internet. It’s a totally vertical small island with no easy access from the water. We’ve passed it to starboard on our way to St. Martin and on our way to St. Barts and now to St. Kitts. Pretty spectacular. We have a very nice sail until we get to the pass between St. Eustatius and St. Kitts. Passage is turbulent and I put the engine on out of a sense of excess caution since we’re close hauled and I want to be sure that leeway doesn’t take us too close to the South end of St. Eustatius although our instruments say we’re more or less on the course I set. For the first time that I remember we’re heeled over a bit more than usual on a starboard tack and the waves begin to lift the aft section of the dinghy on the davits and bang it into the lower portion of the dinghy engine clamped to the aft rail. Not good to say the least. I ease the main and we’re not heeled over as much and the problem subsides but doesn’t disappear. Have to do something about that, but not sure what. Real solution is to deflate tne dinghy and store it on deck each time we make a passage, but that’s not practical when it’s just me and Kryss. St. Eustatius and St. Kitts are both visible pretty much as soon as we leave St. Barts (35 nm away), which is a testament to their height as well as the general visibility. It becomes clear why they are called the “islands in the clouds”. They are high enough that their peaks are actuallyu in the clouds. As we exit the cut between the islands the winds are on our nose as expected and we take in the sails and motor against the wind and waves to Basse Terre, the port in St. Kitts where we will spend the night, about 10nm South. Winds are strong and waves short and steep, but engine does a good job and we just plow along. There’a a smaller light sailboat (“Kali”) shadowing us, and it’s short tacking with the main and actually doing better than we are, but we’re in a comfortable mode and we continue on directly towards Basse Terre under power. We get there ahead of schedule and make our way to our berth in the marina withoug incident. Marina is quite small and generally “unimproved” but the dock hands are very helpful and knowledgeable and I back into our slip (with a tiny finger pier) and tie up for the rest of the day. We’re scheduled to leave early the next morning for St. Kitts based upon my reading of our weather routing service’s (WRI) website (“SeaWeather”) but Kryss and I are both very tired so I communicate with WRI about whether tomorrow is still the best day to leave for Antigua. They indicate that Friday would be a better day to leave so we arrange to stay in St. Kitts for two nights and look forward to catching our breath. No reason not to when the marina fees are 75 cents a foot, so that two nights cost us $75. Not sure why the woman we spoke to on the phone before we got here said it was $2 a ft. Two huge cruise ships are docked just on the other side of the marina breakwater and the little “town” on the wharf was clearly constructed for cruise ship passengers and is really “hokey”. We understand that if we walk a little further we’ll get to the old town here, which is supposed to be interesting. We check in with Customs/Immigration (Customs agent is a doll and Immigration agent is something substantially less but it’s done easily) and we have a drink at one of the local bars before going back to the boat. It’s 3:00 p.m. and neither of us has eaten anything yet for the day. It’s a hot dog dinner when we get back to the boat (too tired to make the steak dinner I had planned) and then to bed, knowing at least, for better or for worse) that we don’t have to get up early or go anywhere tomorrow morning.
3/21 - Walk to the old town and it is marginally interesting in that it is old and most two story buildings have stone first floors and wooden second floors, but all in all, except in the very center where its moderately well kept, the rest of town is exceedingly derelict. We walk along the water front to the World War I monument and then up the hill to the recommended hotels (2) and restaurants (3). Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant, which is part of Ocean Terrace Inn, is perfectly located but not terribly impressive and the menu was ordinary. Serendipity had a very nice menu but was quite pricey, more so than I would spend since it was too long a walk from town for dinner and adding a cab both ways just wasn’t something I wanted to do. Palm Court hotel and restaurant (they have their own little gardens) was very cute and the restaurant looked inviting, but the menu was pedestrian, so we walked back to town. We tried and couldn’t find a single “local” restaurant in the old town that we wanted to frequent, so we did some chore shopping and returned to the boat. It was cloudy all day and drizzled when we were walking in the morning, but later it rained hard frequently through the afternoon. Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla (British) was visiting the Island today and we saw their motorcade as they were leaving for the wharf, but we just missed them. Kryss was disappointed. I wasn’t. Anyway, this is the first really dreary day we’ve experienced and I think it has to do with the clouds hanging out in the mountains overlooking Basse Terre. The Island as we sailed along the coast was very verdant and pretty, but Basse Terre is pretty disappointing.
3/22 - Today we go to Jolly Harbour, Antigua, with the off possibility that we will detour to Montserrate on our way. We know from the forecasts that we will face significant head seas and winds and the trip to Jolly Harbour is 55 nm so we leave early. Marina staff said that they begin work at 6:00 a.m., but when we’re ready to leave at 6:45 a.m. there’s no one around to help us with our lines. Fortunately tie is easy to undo and exit is protected, so we do it without assistance and head South along the West coast of St. Kitts. We have the option of passing through The Narrows between St. Kitts and Nevis or round the South end of Nevis. Distance is pretty much the same, but if we transit The Narrows it might give us enough “northing” to sail a little, at least with the main. As we come abreast of The Narrows I’m not persuaded that even if we transit the narrows we will be able to sail to Antigua, so I opt to round the South tip of Nevis. Winds are already strong and seas significant except when we are in the lee of the highest point of Nevis, so we know we’re going to have an ugly slog to Antigua. As we round Nevis I am not persuaded that we could sail to Monterrate and I’m not anxious to go there before Antigua anyway (it’s further South and West, so only to reason to go first would be to shorten the trip to Antigua), so we head straight for Antigua into 20+ knt. winds and 2-4 ft. seas with the occasional 5+ wave. The sky is clear and we knew what to expect, so we just do it. Boat handles the conditions well and engine moves us along at over 5 knts. at reasonable rpms, so we just settle down for the “grind”. As we leave Nevis Redondo Rock and in the distance Monserrate appear on the horizon with the top of Montserrate covered in clouds as we pass closer. It’s very clear why they call these the Islands I in the Clouds. Winds and seas are supposed to diminish as the day progresses according to our weather routing service, but neither happens, in fact they both increase. Disappointing. That being said we get to Jolly Harbour around 5:00 p.m. after leaving Basse Terre, St. Kitts at around 7:00 a.m., so we made pretty good time. Jolly Harbour is big, not very crowded with depths under 15 ft. to anchor in, so it’s a delight, particurly after the nightmare at St. Barts.
3/23 - We get a slow start to the day but around 1:00 p.m. or so we take the dinghy down from the davits, which is an adventure because it’s quite choppy and things are starting to come loose on the dinghy engine lift, and we motor into customs/immigration. They get their pound of flesh $60+ and we’re told we have to purchase an Antiguan “courtesy flag” to fly while we’re here. The smallest one, not more than a postage stamp is $23. Anyway, after we do that we walk around “town”, which is a tiny group of little stripmall like stores, each one smaller than the next, underwhelming to say the least. They are supposed to have seven good restaurants here, one of which was Chinese. We don’t see it and so I ask someone who says “oh, that hasn’t been open for a long time now, at least a year”. We check out the supermarket which was recommended to us by cruisers Ellen and Rob and it’s OK, but nothing special. We have lunch at a very nice but pricey Greek restaurant, buy a case of beer and head back to the boat. This is a great harbor (large, modest but adequate depths, and picturesque), but when the wind howls out of the East there’s still a good chop and town, well, you don’t come here for the town. We also go to Tech Café, also recommended to us by Ellen and Rob to find out if we can buy some kind of local phone or sim card that will work throughout most of the rest of the islands that we are going to visit, and basically the answer is “no”. My $10/day AT&T plan for unlimited data and 20 cents a minute for “foreign” calls is still the most versatile and best for our purposes, although if you use it every day it is quite expensive.
3/24 - It’s a “hanging out” Sunday. We get up a little late and slowly get ready to dinghy into town to do a little shopping and see if the Tech Café owner has come in since I’m having a problem charging my phone since it got a little wet. A squall comes through and one of the snaps on the center panel of the Isenglass enclosure finally rips out, so now we have to find someone to make that repair when we get to Falmouth. By the time we get back from town the wind is really up and the bay is roilly, so we leave the dinghy in the water to be taken up tomorrow morning before leaving for Falmouth. Not my preference, but no point in trying to do it in difficult conditions if they may abate by tomorrow morning. Kryss takes a rare afternoon nap and I do some course plotting and reading. I wanted to make pork Marsala for dinner but there’s no Marsala to be had so we buy some sweet local wine which is used for baking and some local mango/guava/tamarind based marinade and mix them to make a substitute. It’s not Marsala, but it comes out pretty well.
3/25 - We motor directly into substantial wind and seas for the 13 n.m. or so to Falmouth Harbor (seems like we’ve almost always got the wind on our nose) and tie up at Catamaran Marina, owned by friends of my client and friend Father Peter Bramble of St. Marks Church in Brooklyn. On our way we see a small whale breach about 150 yards away and then follow along on a parallel course for a short while (it was near the surface and you could see the water coming our of its blowhole). The Harbor is very large and it turns out that Catamaran Marina is too far from Town to walk. I guess I should have figured that out in advance, but it’s not such a big deal and we settle down to get some chores done. I get an e-mail back from Graham Knight of Antigua Sails, a canvas repair company that I contacted about repairing the snap in the panel of the Isenglass enclosure, so we’ve got someone to fix that, which is important, and while he’s here I ask him about resewing the tapes that hold the battens into the front of the stackpack, as they have torn and one of the battens has been protruding a couple of inches (figure it’s only a matter of time before we risk losing one). He says he can do it too, and Kryss and I remove the stackpack to bring to him tomorrow. It’s work, but since I’ve done it a couple of times already, we get it done in well under an hour. Kryss gets the laundry ready for the next day as well and it’s dinner time before you know it.
3/26 - The lady who is supposed to pick up the laundry at 8:00 a.m. (there’s no laundromat close to us) isn’t hear by 9:30, so we talk to the office and leave it outside the office to be picked up (hopefully) and we take a cab to Antigua Sails to drop off the stackpack. It’s on the other side of the harbor where there are stores and restaurants (I guess you could call it that). That being said, this area is in much better condition than many of those we have been in lately and and is pleasant to walk through. The road ends at Nelson’s Dockyard, which is a World Heritage Site. It’s a large dock and fortification complex on English Harbor, the harbor adjoinging Falmouth Harbor. The exteriors of the old buildings are very well preserved but have been converted inside to restaurants, shops and a museum. One of the most impressive complexes of this type that I have ever seen. Kryss and I spend a number of hours walking around and then wind up at the restaurant over the Antigua Yacht Club back in Falmouth Harbor for lunch. We have a calamari appetizer and share a sushi main course which turns out to be a nice combination, plenty of food and quite tasty. We taxi back to the boat with a nice young man from Dominica, where we spent a week diving a number of years ago, and chill out for the rest of the afternoon. Winds are the lowest this afternoon than we have seen them in many days.
3/27 - It’s supposed to be a lazy day at the marina before leaving to anchor in English Harbor tomorrow. Read the paper, do some legal work, pick up the repaired lenseglass and stackpack and generally chill. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I attempt to routinely check bank accounts with online banking and find I’m locked out because of a suspicious transaction. Find out that there was in fact a somewhat substantial fraudulent transaction and that Chase is insisting the I close the account to regain access to my online banking. That’s a very serious problem for us for a lot of reasons and I spend almost three hours on the phone with Chase to finally persuade someone to reactivate my online banking access without my having to close the hacked account. By Noon I feel like I’ve run a marathom and then pulled consecutive all-nighters, so we tell the marina we’ll stay another night and I generally try to regain my wits while Kryss fights a nagging cold. The travails of the day are not over however as when I pick up the Isenglass panel and the stackpack I find that the snaps on the Isenglas panel do not line up with the snaps on the boat, so it will have to be “adjusted”. Antigua Sails is good about it and promises to have it done before end of the day tomorrow, but it’s just another annoyance. We do put the stackpack back up without any real difficulty (it’s the third time I’ve done it now so I’m getting to be a “pro”) and we go to the upscale Italian restaurant at the marina for dinner. Makes me tired just to write about it.
3/28 - Isenglass panel is refitted. We do some trip planning. Kryss is trying to sleep her way out of her cold, and so today is more of the chill day that yesterday was supposed to be. Tomorrow we go just around the head land to English Harbor (just a couple of miles) and we’ll stay on our anchor in English Harbor Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights (we can check out with customs in English Harbor on Sunday) with the plan being to make the open water passage to Gaudeloupe on Monday if the weather is suitable.
3/29 - Short engine trip to English Harbor is uneventful. We toyed with the idea of transitting up to Nonsuch Bay instead but as has been the regular case on this trip, any effort to travel due East would have meant slogging into head winds and head seas and we didn’t have the stomach for it. English Harbor is very crowded and I have to anchor on short scope (which doesn’t make me happy) in far too close proximity to some other vessels to make me comfortable, particularly because this section of the harbor is known for fluky winds causing collisions between adjacent boats turning in different directions. It’s so tight that I cannot even put out my usual long snubber, so I improvise with a short one just to allow me to drop some more chain to change my catenary. I dive on the anchor and the good news is that it’s well imbedded in the sand bottom and with protection from the winds here behind the cliffs, we’re pretty much being held in place by the weight of my chain rode. I’m amazed at the termperature of the water. For the first time on this trip I’m in the water without a wetsuit and it’s very comfortable. I guess that’s a product of being this far South. I snorkel over to the rocks cutting this part of the harbor off from the ocean, but the bottom is basically dead except for some eel grass (yes there were a few fish) and there’s no life around the rocks themselves (there is an abandoned fish trap). We don’t do much else except hang out and watch more and more boats come in and anchor closer and closer to one another. I keep thinking that maybe I should move to another location, but I figure that even though I’m swinging closer to other boats than I would like, I know that my anchor is well imbedded and that my chain catenary is doing its job, and who knows what will happen if I move. I sleep in the cockpit with one eye open for the first part of the night with all of my instruments on in case I have to maneouver on short notice in the middle of the night, and after that I go downstairs but am up every hour to look around. Not the most restfull night. Kryss reminds me that we will experience other similar situations elsewhere and that it’s just part of cruising, and I begrudingly acknowledge that she’s right.
3/30 - It rained heavily quite a bit during the night, so we adjust the dinghy on the davits to dump the accumulated water and we work on our schedule for leaving for Guadeloupe and what else we’re going to do for the day. This part of the harbor is on a long crescent beach that has a couple of small restaurants and a small unassuming hotel on it. I am in communication with my weather routing service and it still seems that Monday will be the best day to make the 42 mile passage to Deshaies Guadeloupe.
Another boat comes in and plunks itself down right over my anchor, which annoys me to no end and gives me cause for concern, not only for collision, but for the possibility of them fouling my anchor and the difficulty their presence will pose when we are ready to retrieve our anchor on Monday morning. Oh well, can’t do much about it right now - I shout something about my concerns over to them when they are anchoring, but they blow it off. Kryss and I swim into the beach and walk along the beach for a while. It’s not as simple as it seemed as there is a rock/coral shelf in shallow water that you have to walk over to get to the beach from the water and we think we may have seen an urchin, so we have to search for an opening where our feet are not at risk. With the advice of a local walking along the beach we manage. There’s a cliff top Club and small restaurant that is supposed to have a big Sunday party that we thought we would like to go to, but I realize that doing so would mean bringing up the dinghy and engine early Monday morning just before we left, which is a considerable effort given how we have to do it, so we bag that idea and make a reservation at a clifftop restaurant that has a hotel on the beach where we are walking. It’s just called The Inn. While we’re there we see that they are collecting mounds and mounds of Sargasso weed that has been washing in from the sea. It’s collecting in a small cove and they’re removing it from the water and drying it on the beach. We have been seeing a lot of floating Sargassum all along our trip (I’ve been regularly removing it from my engine and generator strainer baskets) and people everywhere we have gone have been commenting on how it seems to have increased in quantity by leaps and bounds over the last few years and is becoming more and more of a problem for the beaches and boats. We swim back to the boat and relax until it’s time to get ready for dinner. When we get to the hotel dinghy dock we’re in for quite a surprise. They have moved the collected Saragasso weed from the beach to the dock and we have to walk over mounds of drying Sargasso weed to get to the hotel. Luckily they must have used some kind of small vehicle to do the work so there’s a matted down path through the middle of it which we can use, but we’re still plodding through 6-10 inches of drying Sargasso weed. We get a hotel shuttle to the restaurant at the hotel on the cliffs overlooking the harbor and are seated on a patio overlooking the whole harbor. It’s breathtaking and definitely worth the effort. Food is good but not great and expensive, as we have generally found it to be in the better restaurants throughout the islands, but the view made it worthwhile. Trip back to the boat in the dinghy is uneventful, and tonight I don’t feel that I have to sleep in the cockpit.
3/31 - Go back to Nelson’s Dockyard to check out with customs for the passage to Guadeloupe tomorrow. Have a really nice and inexpensive lunch on the porch of the Copper and Lumber restaurant. I had a marvelous West Indian Roti that would have been enough for two for $13. When we get back to the boat we put the dinghy engine back on its rail mount and put the dinghy back on its davits for the journey tomorrow.
4/1 - It’s calm and clear when we awaken and we hustle to get an early start. We’re out of English Harbor with the main up by 7:30 a.m. Wind is mild and seas are calm and we have a very nice sail to Guadeloupe. Along the way the wind veers and dies twice so we’re taking the jib in and out a couple of times, but it goes smoothly. Light seas also mean that we’re not in danger of having the dinghy pontoons dig into the waves as we heel over, a very real concern of mine. (The dinghy is significantly longer than the breadth of the boat at the stern, so the aft section of the dinghy hangs well outboard of the starboard side of the stern as it is presently stowed). Kryss and I talk about a number of ways to deal with that problem temporarily, including raising it higher on the davits by shortening the lifting line (the problem being getting the pontoons too close to the prop of the outboard sitting on the rail), and switching its position so that the aft section faces the port side of the boat since with the prevailing winds for seemingly all of the rest of this trip put us on a starboard tack, which would put the long side of the dinghy on the high side of the boat. We pull into Deshaies Guadeloupe before 3:00 p.m. and we find it as crowded as the Cruising Guide said it would be. It’s also quite a deep harbor, so getting a place to anchor far in is desirable. Also as advised by the Cruising Guide, all the moorings are taken by local boats. I anchor in about 26 ft. of water (more than I like) on short scope (which I definately don’t like) and worry about my proximity to the boat behind me, which is fine as things stand, but whould get quite close or worse if the catenary in my chain were fully extended. The harbor is well-protected, deep indented from the coast and calm, although the winds do whip through the cleft in the mountains as the cruising guide said they would. We dinghy in to clear customs, which is done here on a computer in a little boutique with the assistance of the shopkeeper and costs $4EC for her time and nothing else. A far cry from all of our previous stops which included significant entry and departure fees. The street boardering the waterfront is quaint and filled with restaurants. Very Gallic and very much nicer than those we have encountered to date. have a drink but I’m very tired and not comfortable with my anchored position given the strong gusts we are experiencing, so we retire to the boat for dinner. Ground tackle is holding well and so I relax a little.
4/2 - We both sleep very late and laze around. By middle of the afternoon it’s clear that the boat right astern of me is getting ready to depart, so I get ready to let out more scope and change to my regular long snubber when it does. The boat which is single handed by an older man (older than me) leaves and I let out more scope and switch to my longer snubber with no one right astern of me so I feel better. We were going to go into town for dinner but neither of us much feels like it so I find some leftovers to make and we eat on the boat.
4/3 - Contrary to WRI weather predictions winds are light this morning and sky is sunny. Kryss sleeps late and I do chores like retying the lines to our radar reflector, etc. Then the clouds start to roll in over the mountains and it rains on and off for a number of hours. We finally think there’s a break in the rain and we dinghy in to walk along the river that empties into the bay from the mountains when it starts to rain again and we get soaked, so we abandon that idea and go looking for a car rental place. We find one, but it’s closed and won’t open again until 2:30 p.m., so we check out the bakery and the little superette. Turns out that the superette has imported Toulouse and Merguez sausage and duck breast and a lot of other things like Serrano Ham that we decide we’ll buy later in the day. We have to kill time and it’s after 1:00 p.m. so we pick a restaurant that looks like it has an interesting menu, sit on the veranda overlooking the bay and have lunch. Restaurant is called Mahina and the lunch is spectacular. We shared the plat du jour which was tuna carpaccio and fish rillettes (like a coarse fish mousse) over salad that was magnificient ($13EC) and a salad with smoked duck breast and foie gras that was equally special ($15EC). After lunch we go back to the car rental place which is still closed and when we inquire at the gas station next door we are told that they will open again in the morning. We meet Andy and Lori Bound who are pretty much live on sailboat Volare (a lovely Mason 44). They’ve been cruising like this for 9 years or so (probably about 15 years younger than we are) and we get along well. I take their boat card and promise to e-mail our contact information as I do not have any of our boatcards with me. Kryss and I go to the boulangerie to buy fresh bread and then to the superette and then back to the boat. People are so stupid. Again a boat comes in and anchors right in front of us over where we have laid our anchor and I’m terrified that he’ll foul our anchor and set us adrift. (We’ll see. Nothing I can do about it. I told him what he had done, but he hasn’t moved.) Now a huge slab-sided commercial catamaran type ferry vessel has plunked itself right next to us. I think I’ll take a valium and a nap.
4/4 - We get up early to go to town to rent a car. When we dinghy in we meet Andy and Lori Bound again. After renting the car we drive all along the West coast of Guadeloupe from Deshaies in the North to Basse Terre, the Southernmost harbor. The road is very mountainous and narrow and it takes some getting used to. Car is a 5 on the floor stick which they just assume you know how to drive, so it’s a good thing that I do. We want to check out the Marina just South of Basse Terre to see if it would be a suitable place to stop before going further South to Iles Des Saintes or Dominica. We called but they didn’t speak any English and we didn’t understand their French so only eyeballing the situation will do because the outside anchorage may not be suitable. As it turns out, all of their docking facilities would be med-moored stern to and we wouldn’t have any easy way to get on or off the boat. It’s also quite crowded and so it’s unclear whether they would have a space for whenever we decided to arrive, so we decide that it is not a suitable option for us. We then continue around the island traveling up the East coast and around the Northern end on the way back to Deshaies. The two coasts are very different in many respects. The East coast has small towns and older and many times decrepit homes and small business buildings, except for Basse Terre which is the Capital of Guadeloupe and large, and much of the West side is more developed with industry and much larger buildings and towns. The center of the Island is mountainous rainforest with the active volcano Suofriere at its epicenter. We stop at a little beach at the North end of the Island for lunch at a small restaurant on the beach. It’s amazing how things are so different here from the other places we have been. The smallest most out of the way restaurant has really good and varied food, mostly what they call Creole, which is French bistro type food with an island twist. We are invited by the Bounds to Volare for wine and we spend a very pleasant couple of hours with them. They are very laid back and knowledgeable with a lot of experience cruising these waters. It turns out that they are in urgent need of a US Notary because of some paperwork that they have to send to their son, and because they could find none in any of these islands they were planning to take off for Grenada or Curacao in a day or so to access a Notary. Well, Kryss and I are both New York Notaries, so we can save them that major inconvenience and we arrange to have them come to our boat early the next morning before we leave for touring so that I can Notarize what they need.
4/5 - We get up early, do our notarizing and then travel back down the East side of the Island to Mount Soufriere, near Basse Terre. We meet Jeff Sockwell at the dinghy dock (we were next to him in St. Kitts) and we bump into him a number of other times during our stay in Deshaies. Today we plan to visit the volcano, which is a long walk up the mountain from where the road ends in a park with no services whatsoever. When we arrive there are many many many cars already parked along the side of this one and one-half lane mountain road that falls off into the void on one side and into a deep drainage ditch on the other side. We park and hike up to the beginning of the trail through the rainforest to the volcano. The rainforest is very lush and beautiful but the trail is very steep, narrow and in many places difficult, and we decide that hiking the reported 1.75 hrs. each way (others have said that it takes 2.5 hrs. each way) is just not something that we’re up for, so we stop and return to our car. When we start down this precipitous winding one and one-half lane mountain road I find that my brakes are not working on the car we rented and I have to coast to a stop on the side of the road using the emergency brake. We call the car rental place - it’s 2.5 hours away, but our French is not good enough and they have little English so we’re at an impasse. Fortunately a local municipal police car is coming down from the trailhead and we wave them over. They have some English and they get on the phone with the car rental company. It turns out that apparently you cannot brake going downhill in first gear or (remember, this is a manual transmission car) which I was apparently in (yes it was that steep where we were). One of the policemen drives the car down the mountain with Kryss while I go with the other. I still don’t trust it. I’ve never heard of such a thing, but as I very gingerly start to drive the car again I find that the brakes are generally working, so we continue our trip again up the West coast. There is a beach town that is supposed to be very picturesque about half way up, but when we get there, the road to access what we believe is the place we are trying to reach is marked as one-way, do not enter and we cannot find another way in, so we abandon that plan as well and decide to take a secondary road across the mountains to get back to the East side. The road cuts right through the mountainious rainforest and is quite beautiful. We stop at a cliff side restaurant called L’Etoile and are again not disappointed by the food which is excellent, interesting, plentiful and reasonable. I know, I know, it sounds like all we are doing is eating, but we’re also seeing the Island, although not necessarily all the sites as planned. We return to the boat and it’s as calm as can be, so we settle in and relax. In the middle of the night the wind picks up and starts to howl, tossing us this way and that. I’m up a good part of the night checking that our anchor is holding and that we’re not swinging into another boat or that another boat is not swinging into us. The Cruising Guide does warn that when the winds are strong and funnel through the cut in the mountains at this anchorage that it can feel more like the Roaring Forties than the Caribbean. It’s right.
4/6 - The wind howls through the night and into the morning and I question whether it will be safe to dinghy to shore and I worry about leaving our boat at anchor. A small trimaran came in last night and anchored right in front of us and in the vicinity of our anchor, so he’s a worry too. At 9:00 a.m. this morning he breaks loose and is drifting right down on us, he fends us off but catches our dinghy, which is tied alongside our boat, and then falls off of his boat into the water trying to free it. After he grabs our ladder (bending its struts with his bulk), Kryss grabs his arm and helps him get onto our boat. We put out an emergency call on the VHF. My dinghy, because it is not a rigid bottom and because the engine has not been terribly reliable is not suitable to safely use to try to corral his boat on its way out to sea, but now everyone in the anchorage is alerted to the problem and a number of hard bottomed dinghies take off in pursuit of his drifting boat. They finally do corral it and he motors in to try anchoring again closer to shore in more shallow water. Turns out he left scuff marks on our hull I can’t tell whether they are in our finish or they are white from his hull which will come off relatively easily, but I hope it’s the latter. Didn’t realize that until a day or two later. He never came by to see if he had done any damage or to apologize or anything. You can’t make this stuff up! Later we learn that another boat had broken loose the night before and was drifting out to sea while its owners were dining in town. Some alert cruisers on their boats saw it, went into town to find the owners, and then helped to “rescue” it and bring it back to anchor. Imagine sitting in a restaurant and being told your boat was drifting out to sea. It was my constant nightmare when we were off the boat. We take the car to the nearby Botanical Gardens which are extensive and very well designed, definitely a worthwhile visit, and then we go to St. Rose, about 17 km. away to do our laundry. It’s Saturday and on the way back we get behind a bicycle race on the main road (mountainous and winding), which is an adventure in and of itself as there is only one lane each way on the road and no real shoulder, so maneuvering around them and passing them safely when possible, etc. requires patience and some intestinal fortitude.
4/7 - We pretty much hang out, do some shopping and put the dinghy away to get ready for the passage to Les Saintes, a group of five small islands about 6 nm. Southeast of Guadeloupe, which are politically part of Guadeloupe. True to form another small single-handed sailboat anchors too close to us for comfort and there is nothing I can do to persuade the owner to move it further away. It definitely keeps me up part of the night.
4/8 - We get ready to leave and we wonder if we will be able to retrieve our anchor without having to have the boat that came in too close yesterday move. I think we can accomplish it without that, but I am hardly certain. As it turns out, the winds cooperate; Kryss is masterful handling the boat while I use the windlass to retrieve the anchor; and we have just enough room to “get out of Dodge” safely. Most of the passage is along the West shore of Guadeloupe so there will be no seas for that portion and the winds will be “fluky”, sometimes 22 kts., sometimes 2 kts. and very strangely, a lot of the time from the West, which we have not seen this whole trip. Along the way we are accompanied by two whales for a short time. The first we become aware of them is when they spout to our port between us and Guadeloupe, not far off shore, but Guadeloupe is generally “steep to” so the water’s pretty deep. As we expected, when we leave the lee of Guadeloupe the winds pipe up and resume their E/SE directions. The winds are strong but the seas are not considerable and we make the 6.6 nm. to Les Saintes quickly and relatively comfortably. When we arrive we look at the anchorage behind Islet Cabrit that was recommended to us by Andy and Lori, but it’s too far from town on the Island of Terre de Haut for us to safely dinghy back and forth so we investigate the main anchorage at Terre de Haut which is reportedly rolly. When we get there it’s not bad and we don’t really have a choice so we look at the moorings which we have been warned about. Unlike the mooring buoys were have encountered until now which have tethers that you pick up and attach your lines to, these have no tethers. They have large rings which you have to be able to reach and feed your mooring lines through directly. Our bow is too high off the water to allow us to reach these rings, so the only two options are to put the dinghy in the water and use it to get lines through the buoy or to get in the water and swim the lines to the buoys. As you must surmise by putting our dinghy in the water is an not insignificant enterprise due to the way it hangs in our davits, and swimming to the buoy, etc. has it own challenges. I can just see me doing that on the wrong day when Kryss is annoyed at me and me hanging on to the mooring while the boat sails away! (Just kidding). Anyway, as I had hoped, a couple in a dinghy come by and they take our mooring line and put it through the mooring ball for us. I guess every once in a while things work out. We launch the dinghy and go into Bourg Des Saintes to check it out. It’s another quaint quayside two street town with a lot of restaurants posting interesting menus at reasonable prices with an emphasis on French and Creole dishes. We bump into Andy and Lori Bound while walking around and generally get the lay of the land so to speak before having an adult beverage at one of the myriad beachside restaurants and then returning to the boat for dinner.
4/9 - We dinghy into town around 10:30; make a dinner reservation at the restaurant that Andy and Lori Bound said they ate in the night before and loved, and then take a very steep hike up the mountain road to Fort Napolean, which overlooks the harbor. It’s been renovated inside with each of its 18 old rooms hosting exhibits of the history of the Island and the Fort. The views are great and we take a lot of pictures. It also has a nice little cactus garden, which rather pales in comparison to the magnificent and extensive botanical garden in Deshaies. We are told that we can take on water at the ferry dock at certain hours when the ferry is not there, but we are going to need someone on the dock to help us with our lines and we spend a lot of time trying to pin down whether we can make that happen. We are told that the ferry staff will help us but we’re quite skeptical. Finally we learn that we can hail them on Channel 8 of the VHF radio to call for their assistance, so that’s a start. We also need to change moorings to do that and to move to a calmer part of the anchorage which will also be a challenge and we spend considerable time trying to figure out how we can do that safely without the assistance of someone else in a dinghy. We have a number of ideas, but none is perfect, and I’ll lose some sleep tonight worrying about bringing the boat into this big commercial dock for water and then picking up a new mooring. Ah the cruising life. We didn’t plan to, particularly with a dinner out coming up, but we have another magnificent lunch. Really magnificent and not expensive. We are really eating our way through the West Indies and so far the French Islands are tops. They really put an emphasis on good food.
4/10 - We determine that water is available at Prince Rupert Bay (Portsmouth) Dominica, so we abandon the idea of taking on water in Terre de Haut and go for a walk (a long steep walk) to Pain du Sucre, an odd round high outcropping in one corner of the harbor that creates a mini-harbor and has very interesting natural characteristics. After lunch we return to the boat and get ready for the passage to Dominica tomorrow. It’s short (20nm) but 17 are in the open and I have a feeling that it will be rough. This anchorage at Terre de Haut is pretty and safe, but it’s very rolly and we’ll be glad to be leaving.
4/11 - We leave at around 8:00am in moderate winds (we’re in the lee of the Islands for the first three miles) but as we exit into the open channel to Dominica the wind picks up and the seas/swells are significant. I reefed the main before we left and I was glad I did. It never blew less than 20 knts. It generally blew around 23/24 knts. and it gusted to 30 knts. a number of times. We motor sail without the jib because I am still afraid that the dinghy is not adequately supported on the davits and do not wish to heel too far over so as to keep it out of the water; also, by the time I was ready to take out the jib we were in heavy winds and seas and I wasn’t comfortable with doing it with Kryss under the conditions, even though it’s really pretty easy (I know, I’m a wuss, but the idea is to make this comfortable in body and mind), so I defend my choice. When we pull into Prince Rupert Bay it continues to blow pretty good and there’s modest wave action even in the anchorage. We hail Lawrence Nelson on the VHF (“Lawrence of Arabia” he calls himself in his ad in the Cruising Guide) and he leads us to the water buoy, helps us take on water, and then leads us to a mooring and helps us tie up. There is an organization here called PAYS and its members provide those kinds of services as well as security, tour guiding, etc. We have been warned that we will be inundated by locals looking to sell us stuff and do things for us, and that we should only deal with PAYS members. In fact we are “accosted” by a few locals (one who wants to sell us a Dominica flag, one who wants to sell us fruit, etc. and one who wants to take our garbage), but generally speaking we have not been bothered by the locals and all of the PAYS representatives that we have dealt with have been very helpful. Lawrence provides “water taxi” service to Customs which is all the way on the other side of the harbor, which is very long and we are able to check in and check out at the same time with an allowance that we can stay for two weeks. Back on the boat we realize that our mooring is adjacent to that of Volare, the boat owned by Andy and Lori Bound and Lori swims over to say hello. Problem with the anchorage today is that there is a southerly swell and so it’s very rolly, although when we heard from Lori Bound yesterday that they had arrived she said the anchorage was calm.
4/12 - It’s the first relatively calm day with milder breezes, but of course we’re on a mooring in the harbor so it doesn’t really matter much. It’s not as rolly, but hardly calm and I spend most of the day doing legal work and focusing on where I’m going to leave the boat for the hurricane season. The Bounds have told us that President Maduro has directed his navy to keep American boats away from the ABCs, but Kryss goes online to “Women Who Sail” and it turns out that we hear from people who are there and who have recently arrived there that if you approach from the North the Venezuelan navy does not bother you although they report that they were boarded by the Dutch navy without incident. The marina that people like to use in Grenada if fully booked, and I don’t really want to leave the boat in Grenada, so I reach out to the biggest marina in Curacao and they have room for us. I then reach out to our insurance company to make sure they will give us a hurricane waiver for that marina and Curacao and find out how much it will cost. Turns out they will and cost is reasonable, so now it’s about getting crew to help me get the boat to Curacao. I’m told I can book at that Marina on Monday, that they still have 35 places available. Now I have to find crew, but I think Curacao is my best bet for a lot of reasons, so I’m going to book it on Monday. Sump pump switch in our head fails, so that’s one more project for tomorrow and bilge pump is cycling for no apparent reason, so that’s another. Always something to do on a boat.
4/13 - It blows hard all night and is blowing in the 20's in the morning, but the swell has left, so it’s not rolly, which is a big plus. Find that a connector has corroded off on the sump pump switch and that I can access the switch without turning myself into a pretzel, so that’s an easy fix. Put bilge cleaner in the bilge and let it slosh around with the bilge pump off, after which bilge pump seems to have stopped cycling. Probably some debris was interfering with the internal float switch. Will have to monitor it. Kryss and I take up Lawrence’s offer of a late afternoon river trip (Andy and Lori really liked it). The river is very shallow and a lot of the growth on the banks was badly damaged by last year’s hurricanes. Between us, Kryss and I know pretty much as much as Lawrence about the flora and fauna (fauna not very plentiful) and it’s raining, so the trip is “no great shakes” but it gets us off the boat and now we know we have seen the river. There’s a little bar set up in the jungle where the river is no longer navigable with a nicely cultivated botanical garden, and so the highlight of the river trip is getting to dry off, have a rum punch and walk in the jungle a little. Lawrence takes some local green reeds and makes a very pretty origami bird and fish on a stick for Kryss. We’ve installed it in the salon and hope we can keep it safe. We were going to have dinner with Andy and Lori but they report that the restaurant they wanted to eat in was closed for a week and that the one next door where they had lunch wasn’t very good, so we eat on the boat.
4/14 - We sail down to Roseau, the capital of Dominica in order to have a shorter trip to Martinique the next day. We had stayed in Roseau at the Fort Young hotel for a week about 9 years ago when we flew to Dominica for a diving trip. The sail, even though it is in the lee of Dominica is boisterous at times. Part of the time it blows like crazy, some of the time there are calms, and some of the time the wind veers and blows inexplicably from the West. The jib comes out, goes in, comes out again in part, and then back in. It’s kind of weird. Anyway, we pull into Roseau and hail “Marcus” (Marcus Security) whose name we get from the cruising guide to help us tie up to a mooring. He also provides security for the boat which the Cruising Guide says is a good thing in Roseau. Marcus performs very much the same kinds of functions in Roseau as Lawrence did in Prince Rupert Bay. Since Dominica is volcanic, it is very “steep to” to the shore and we are moored literally a stone’s throw from the shore in 60 feet of water. Having stayed in Roseau for a week and seeing the evidence of the 2017 hurricane destruction, we feel no need to get off the boat, particularly since we are leaving the next morning for Martinique.
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