What a day. We flew down to Martinique, top speed of 8.8 kts. Unheard of for us, except for flying down the East River in NYC with the current. Dolphins came to visit briefly again, but nothing like the day before when they swam and played beside us for a long while, catapulting themselves up at least 20 ft in the air.

We're moving fast now, just trying to get south while the weather is agreeable. Meaning we have to accept that we're passing through some incredibly cool islands that one could spend weeks exploring. We're settling for finding some cheese and bread here in Martinique, the last French island we'll be stopping at.
We're thinking we might have to come back this way again after hurricane season.

It felt a bit strange arriving in St Pierre, knowing that the town,or commune as the French seem to call them, would probably be a skeleton of it's former self. St Pierre was referred to as "the Paris of the Caribbean" in it's glory days before it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 1902. This photo was taken with the IPad and came out a bit dark and blurry, but somehow seemed better suited to this town than the bright clear shots.

We were all hot, sun baked and exhausted by the time the anchor was set so in the big "pool" we jumped. Isobel spotted some kids on a boat nearby so we swam over to chat and tread water. We met a friendly French family who does charters in the French islands who currently has 4 kids under 4 on board their boat. With that much craziness already, they offered to have Isobel stay while we went into town. She was thrilled!

We cleaned up and had a not completely productive trip to town. Conflicting reports of where to clear in/out had us wandering the hot streets, finding nothing. We did find a man selling nice looking veggies out of his truck on the side of the road and some cheese at the local grocery. The town's bakery was a total disappointment after the fabulous bread and croissants we had become accustomed to in Deshaies. Probably a good thing though, because the volume of bakery items we were consuming couldn't be sustainable.