February 2010
Grenada
The first few days of the month were the end of Grenada Sailing Festival main regatta. The following weekend we went to Grand Anse beach to watch the Workboat Regatta. This is an event for local boats from the three islands that make up Grenada. It's very closely contested and the main prize is $1,000 US! The starts are 'Le Mans' style starts with four of the five crew holding the boat off the beach and the fifth member sprinting down the beach and jumping into the boat as the wind blows it down the course.
Chaos ensues and there appear to be few rules! To finish, after sailing the course the skipper of the boat must run up the beach and drink a glass of rum to win! All this takes place to seriously loud music or a pan band belting away up the beach. The beach party after the last day's sailing saw thousands of people on the beach drinking, dancing and partying. A great occasion!
Since then we've been waiting for the large north swells to die down before setting off "up island' (i.e. northwards) up the island chain. It looks like later this week will provide an opportunity.
While waiting we took a 'dollar bus' up to Grand Etaing and walked up Mount Qua Qua. A pleasant walk of around an hour on a good track (if it's dry as it was for us) takes you up past a spectacular old volcanic crater to a peak with great views northwards to steep peaks and east and west to both coasts.
The swells died down on Monday 15th when we staged round to St Georges to facilitate an early departure. We weighed anchor at 05.00 on Tuesday 16th and sailed the 64 miles to Bequia at the northern end of the Grenadines, arriving at 16.30. A good sail on a close reach with full main and for some of the time a reefed headsail. The following day we left Bequia for the 95 mile run to Le Marin on the south coast of Martinique.
The run across to St Vincent is always a fun broad reach, but this time we managed to keep out speed of 7 and 8 knots up all the way up the leeward coast of St Vincent - very unusual! We cleared the northern tip of St Vincent around sunset (18.15) and crossed to St Lucia with one reef in the main and 2/3 of the headsail. We also managed to sail up the leeward coast of St Lucia around 7 miles offshore at around 3 to 4 knots passing Rodney Bay in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Off the Pitons (SW St Lucia) we say strange lights ahead - obviously a ship of some kind, but we saw red over green over a pyramid of white lights with another green showing lower down when viewed through binoculars. It appeared to be approaching us on a collision course, but very slowly. As we came closer we worked out is was one of the smaller cruise ships with four masts and showing some sail, and we were approaching it from astern. This shows how annoying all round red over all round green is on a sailing yacht - you know something's there (which you know anyway) but it gives you no further information about aspect. We should not have been able to see the lower green light from astern either, and add to that the fact that they were actually motor-sailing their lights were wrong and confusing.
Eventually the turned to starboard towards the Pitons (directly upwind which is why I know they were motoring) and when about a mile or so away put on their full array of bow to mast-heads to stern white lights for about 2 minutes. I have no idea why they did that. Maybe someone pressed the wrong button!
Cruise ship lighting is often confusing as you can't see the nav lights against the Christmas tree effect of all the other lights they show. You sure know something;'s there but you have no idea which way it's going!
Once clear of St Lucia our speed picked up as we reached across to Martinique at mostly 8 knots. The lights of Martinique were visible ahead before those of St Lucia were lost astern making for easy navigation.
Romping along on a pitch black starry night, hand steering all the way (the batteries are getting old and I didn't want to use the autohelm as we'd have had to run the engine more often) we arrived off Martinique just after sunrise and dropped anchor in Marin at 07.00 in time to go ashore for coffee, croissants and pain du chocolate, and to check in and shop for French-style food in the supermarkets.
Two and a half days great sailing and a superb destination - what it's all about!
After a day in Marin itself to check in and re-provision we moved out to anchor off the broad beach north of Sainte Anne where the water is cleaner for swimming off the boat and the winds are cooler than in the main harbour. The two has small supermarkets, a couple of good bread and cake shops and a really good Internet cafe that sells great ice-cream. This probably helps explain why we spent 10 days there having a 'holiday within a holiday'.
We hired a car for a self-guided island tour following the Route de la Trace up into the steep volcano region in the north of the island. Dropping down to the east coats we enjoyed a good meal at the beach side Pointe du Vue restaurant then toured the Caravelle Peninsula with its small villages and interesting looking anchorages on the windward side. The whole eastern side of the island was a surprise - more developed than the windward sides of most of the islands with some good beaches and bays.
On Thursday evening English-speaking cruisers gather near the dive dock on the beach for sundowners and pot luck food. Here we met various cruisers who were passing through or live here all season.
At the end of February we checked out early, bought some final supplies of French bread and then left early on 1st March to sail south to St Lucia.