Nov 10
Rolf and I had to leave Victoria late on Thursday for Seattle.
Nov 11
Early flight out of Seattle to Dallas, then to San Juan (Puerto Rico), and finally we arrived in
Fort de France, Martinique. It was pretty late and we took a taxi to our hotel, Le Dock, in Le Marin. Unfortunately, we couldn't get onto the boat that night as it was just returned by the owners and still needed to be cleaned.
Arriving at Le Dock at some time before midnight, there was a big party going on. Not quite what we were hoping for. The next shock were the tiny, stuffy rooms with a tiny double bed. We were told that the party would be over at 2 am and thought "okay, we can take that", left the stuffy room and had our first Caribbean rum downstairs on the porch. Big mistake, we should have left right away! But, as this was the only hotel in Le Marin, we didn't really have a choice. Long story short, the party, which happened right under our windows, didn't end until 4:15am... I guess, after that we slept until 10am from sheer exhaustion.
Nov 12
After having missed our 8am breakfast to the annoyance of the lady running the place, we left our bags with the charter company Star Voyage, had lunch in a restaurant (finally something to eat!), organized our groceries and got onto the boat in the afternoon to stay overnight.
We girls had a great time with the shopping, cracking up about all kinds of things, especially when I tried to call Rolf on the Walkie Talkie while the supermarket's driver drove us back to the marina.
It's clear now, we are on island time where 5 min could be anything between 5 min and half an hour.
Nov 13
After another night of loud music coming from the shore, the girls spent more time grocery shopping while the guys went through the instructions. Luckily, they were not "ronned" this time (referring to the hours of instructions Ron took them through in The Bahamas two years ago).
After breakfast at the restaurant, we headed off to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, 22 miles South.
Once out of the marina, the failure reports started to come in. Over the next few hours, we realized the generator and the inverter not working properly (we already knew that the owner had pretty much depleted the batteries before returning the boat...), the propane in the lighter for the stove was out, the oven was crap, the watermaker not working and so on. Mind you, this boat is only 7 months old!!! Apparently, not only were things not working, the owner also seems to have no idea of sailing. But our guys took care of that as much as they could (referring to furler, blocks, automatic winch on the wrong side, no radio on the fly-bridge, wrong set up of the track - admittedly a mistake by the designer just as the design of the roof which made sure that all cushions would get wet when it rains...). Anyway, it's a beautiful boat with soo much space! I just love it!
On this first day of our trip, we couldn't believe our luck with regard to the wildlife viewings. After getting all excited about the first flying fishes we saw (which would in the days to come be downgraded to plain boring), we had "dolphins without noses" join us for some time, riding our bow wave. After that, we passed a sleeping sperm whale (for the Germans: ein Potwal wie Moby Dick) at close distance, which was quite a sight. What a day!
Once arrived in Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia, Rolf missed the opening hours of customs by ten minutes due to a wrong turn. He was recognized by the office ladies the next day as "the guy with the life jacket" (nobody else wears one ina dinghy and we stopped doing it also).
Nov 14
After yet another night of troubled sleeping due to loud party music from the Sandals (does that ever end?), Rolf covered customs and afterwards, we went into town for, guess what, more grocery shopping. On the way back we talked to some Australians about their interesting set up of solar panels with four wind generators and a couple from Cologne (we greeted them with "Kölle Alaaf") about the dog they had on board. Lots of Germans and Canadians on those boats around us!
We left Saint Lucia to head for Saint Vincent and The Grenadines. Apparently, snorkeling is nicest in The Grenadines, and we wanted to spend a few days there before heading back North. The crossing was mostly uneventful, just bumpier than I had expected it to be on a cat... After all the wildlife we saw on our first day, we were quite disappointed to be left with flying fish only. We stayed overnight in a beautiful spot, between the two Piton mountains, with shallow, turquoise water around us. When approaching the island, we were greeted by the most amazing, flowery smell, like honeysuckle or yasmin. It was wonderful! A little bit of sulfur smell was coming up once in a while, too, though, because of the volcanoes.
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| The big Piton mountain in the morning |
Leaving the next morning, we saw a turtle floating on the surface, but otherwise, that was it for that day.
We arrived to the wonderful honeysuckle smell again in Wallilabou Bay, St. Vincent. Looking for the restaurant we had red about, we were a little taking aback by the rundown appearance of the bay. That feeling changed 180 degrees once we were tied up and beyond the boat boys. We did get bombarded by those and made a big tactical mistake: all four of us were talking to all of them at the same time, thus unnecessarily complicating the barter. We were mostly looking for fish, not having gotten any yet. In the end, Rolf made some arrangements. See the next paragraph for more on those.
After an unsuccessful trip to the shore to cover customs and immigrations - again -, we decided to all go on shore at the same time, go to the "real" restaurant, and order food while Rolf covered the formalities. This is when we found out that Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed in that bay in 2003 and 2005. I made sure to take lots of pictures, including the rock-arch at the entrance of the bay, which featured three hanged men in "Dead Man's Chest". The dock we docked our dinghy on was the one that Captain Sparrow stepped on from the top of his mast while his ship was sinking. Everybody probably remembers that sequence.
After an unexpectedly good dinner with more rum punch (we had had our "arrival" rum punch much earlier already, of course), beer and white wine, I crashed into bed at 7:30pm with the rest of the crew, including the skipper, following not long after.
Nov 16
Had a good night's sleep in Wallilabou Bay regardless of the private party in the beach hut. Our provider Ronald, or was it Rudolf (red nosed)? Oh no, it was Randolf, provided us with tuna at 7:30am caught that very morning. Rolf had arranged for this delivery the previous night. He also promised to return for the home-baked buns, baked by his mom, later. In the meantime, we had more fishermen approach our boat and we decided to buy even more tuna. Some we froze for sashimi, the rest will be fried tonight. While hanging around, Rolf decided to build a preventer for the boom and floated his cabin in the process... It had rained substantially during the night and a lot of water had collected in the sails - and his hatch was open... Randolf came back with the "homemade" buns, baked by his mother, which turned out to be store-bought hot dog buns with dried-up ends....he promised to be back to have "the ladies" look at some of his stuff... After having sold us some beads that Randolf claimed to have made himself - and which looked exactly like the ones that were offered to us on St. Lucia (I "booked" this expense under "donations") - he promised us to return and help with filling up our water tanks at the local restaurant as our water maker doesn't seem to be working. In the meantime, we watched kids bath in the water, a guy pee into the same water, and talked to more fishermen. Everybody was really nice and friendly, not like the St. Lucians at all. Also, they all only had ores, only one fisher boat had a motor! What a work-out!!!
*****
Well, the water refill was quite an act, but we got it done. Helps to be on "island time", too. Bought a fishing line and hootchie to be self-sufficient from now on ;-)
Today, the guys forgot to tell the girls that it would be the windiest day of the week and that the ride would be quite bumpy. So we ended up having to close the hatches while being thrown around, or up, depending on the waves. "Great" experience! We ended up in an average of 3.3 feet (1,25m) waves with the highest wave being 5.5 feet (2m). As those were only 6 seconds apart and very steep*, we expected to feel either squeezy (= sick + queezy) or perrified (= petrified + terrified), but on the fly-bridge, we all were actually alright. It's the best place to be on the boat in such conditions and all I could think of was "I'm getting hungry"...
*precise wave measurements thanks to an iPhone app
It got even bumpier (2,5-3m waves) just before turning into Friendship Bay on Baquia and we all got a little bit showered in salt water. Now we are sitting in our forward "bathtub", pointing into the wind, enjoying the shade and the breeze, while looking towards the aft of a sunsail charter cat where the cruisers are sitting in the stifling hot sun completely protected from the wind by the salon, a place where you really wouldn't want to be on a day like this.
If you want to, check out the Lagoon video on You Tube, to see what our boat looks like. Search for "Lagoon 450".
Nov 16 Friendship Bay, Bequia, Grenadines
Again, we turned in very early. Must be all the fresh air, the sun and the wind. The tuna JoAnne fried was amazing! It remained very stormy over night and all the different sounds of the boat kept some of us awake for a while.
Our plan for today is to stock up on groceries (going there by taxi) and visiting a turtle sanctuary. After that, we don't know yet, maybe we stay another night in Friendship Bay.
Now that I caught up to my report writing, I hope we find a wireless spot in town so that I can post it.
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