This is the story of how we got from There to Here. Of course Dave asked (as I kind of knew he would), "I thought we were going from Here to There?"

Back then when we were There, WindGuru was showing a few consecutive days worth of peaceful green colours, arrows pointing the winds from an Easterly / South-Easterly direction which would allow us to sail along quite nicely towards North, in relative comfort and ease and so we planned to go, Go, GO!!!

"I'm pretty anxious to go, Go, GO!!!" said Dave, and I have to admit, I was too. We had really, really enjoyed Grenada and we were feeling a pull at our heartstrings as we headed away from the anchorage, the remaining masts seemingly waving good-bye,



but it was time to get moving and get adventurin'

Getting unglued from our anchorage was Step 1 in getting from There to Here. The plan was born that, if all went well with the WaterMaker fix, we would envision pulling an overnighter to Saint Lucia.

We got to X-Marine first thing in the morning. They installed, they tweaked, it started and then it stalled and stopped. Damn.

And so they un-installed it, they checked it and checked it again, they tweaked it, they re-installed, and they said it would work, and you know what? It worked. Shazzam!!

Checkout with Customs at the PLM marina was easy. And then with a way-too-quick hello, followed by an almost instantaneous good-bye, to friends Paul and Sheryl (Distant Shores) we almost found ourselves changing our minds!! It's always hard to leave good friends, especially when you haven't seen them in a while, and it took all we had in us not to stay behind for one more day so we could continue visiting with them !! Dinner next time !!

Our log book shows that our sails were up and we were gliding up the Grenadian Coastline by 14:05, and it was nice to feel the freedom of the wind on our faces, excited to be going someplace. We be finally adventurin' !!

The winds were good, just as predicted. The seas were good, just as forecasted. We sailed, just as planned. Our water maker hummed along, just as we had hoped.

There were a few dark patches along the way,



and yet we were lucky enough that all them clouds with promises of rain seemed to sidestep us.



We enjoyed supper watching the evening sunset



heeled at an angle while the winds continued to scream us along at almost 7 knots.



We were both feeling quite drained and tired though, and around 8-ish, as the winds continued to howl at a constant 20-25 knots, we made the call that we just didn't have it in us to want to continue going overnight at this pace. The clear skies that Passage Weather had shown weren't materializing and a few lightning flashes were seen off in the distance. The seas were building up as well making our ride a tad bouncier than expected.

It was all still do-able, and all in the adventurin'... but why? And so we changed direction and headed into the darkness that is an approaching land mass and the open bay of Chatham Harbour greeted us with just a few twinkling anchor lights, good, we weren't going to be alone !

Anchor procedures in the darkness of night proved to thankfully quite effortless, thanks to Radar showing us blobs of purple boats surrounding us as we inched closer into the blackness (there were quite a few boats there without anchor lights on and why??), and Dave and I executed our well routined choreography of unspoken hand signals that is called anchoring.

And so that ended almost 8 hours and (approx) 45 nm (we forgot to install our speed log) into our voyage. Sleep beckoned and we listened as we crashed hard, anchor alarm on just in case.

Waking up the next morning we debated over coffee as to what our next course of direction would be. The lull in the winds would make for a great visit to the Tobago Cays, and wait out the upcoming system in Bequia perhaps? But... looking at the weather we kept on hemming and hawing, which in hindsight proves that our souls weren't here for the stay.

Up anchor at 7 a.m. and off we went, the winds still blowing but a tad less than during the night, the seas a tad calmer as well. Doesn't everything seem calmer during the visibility of daylight hours?

We checked in with Coconut Telegraph over coffee, munched on breakfast as we sailed by Bequia, and enjoyed lunch as we kind of motor-sailed in the calmness past Saint Vincent.



There wasn't much to look at during the day other than a few flying fish scattering in all directions as we glided past. The AIS hit a few targets, our attention caught on a container ship off on the horizon,





We were really hoping to reach the mooring balls by the Magnificent Saint Lucia pitons before sunset, but our timing was off by just a couple of hours, dommage !



The rain squall off in the distance was quite prettily illuminated,



as the sun set with its spectacular colours,



In the total darkness of night we glided by a cruise ship.



And we agreed on three more hours, choosing to settle in Rodney Bay and go to bed with the restful knowledge that we were There!

Rodney Bay is another easy night-time harbour to enter, and we were soon scanning the approaching shoreline for an empty spot for us. We'd been here before so that helped our mental image of the place, the coast littered with lights of town which made spotting the anchor lights a little more difficult, however once again the radar confirmed what we were seeing.

Rodney Bay is not reputed to have the greatest anchoring and on our second attempt we dug in hard enough to satisfy Banyan for the night. We were both exhausted and fell asleep to the soca-thumping beat of the nearby bar blasting its incessant beat.

We covered 98.5 more nm today, in a total of 15 hours.

The soca thumping drums of the nearby bar were still blasting their beat at 5 am waking us up and once again we found ourselves hemming and hawing, debating on whether we should stay or go.

If we stayed we would have to clear customs, pay the required fees and Saint Lucia offered much that we wanted to explore...

The other hand was required to check the clues appearing in the ever present weather. Bottom line was that we had another day (possibly two) of do-able travel ahead of us but wherever we were going to settle is where we were going to stay for well, quite some time.

Was Saint-Lucia going to be the Here we were looking for? It was soon going to get very busy with the incoming ARC boats. We didn't need to shop/provision or purchase anything and we certainly weren't toe tapping to the beat of the drums.

Martinique was the next island up the chain, and we did some quick research, found reports of a small, quaint, sleepy little French town (with beautiful beaches) called Ste Anne and voila... one more passage was born.

One more crossing added 4 more hours and 25 more nm to our journey.

And as the anchor settled in Ste Anne, in not even 15 feet of blue waters clear to the sandy bottom, 169 nm and 27 hours later, we both happily exclaimed,

"We are Here!"