GHOST

After New Year we headed back to the beautiful Tobago Cays for a couple more days of snorkelling with turtles and a farewell dinner with Raylah (who are heading south and then across to Panama), and then headed north to drop Jay off in Kingstown, St Vincent - definitely a place we didn't want to stop in and we were glad he made it to the airport ok! We then continued north dropping the anchor for a short rest in Rrrrodney Bay on St Lucia.

The following day we crossed to Martinique and met up with Meander for Mojitos. They regaled us with tales of their 27 day crossing - thank god we had some wind for ours! Starting 2 weeks earlier certainly made a difference this year.

We then checked into Marin marina and spent the day cleaning the boat and doing a TON of washing. As Martinique is a French territory we were also delighted to have decent supermarkets selling more than just chicken so stocked up - especially as the dingy dock was next to the trolley station... what more could a sailor want in a supermarket!

Sojorn then joined us in Marin and we had a lovely dinner and drinks on GHOST with both Sojourn and Meander who had never met each other but crossed the Atlantic at the same time and spoke every day on the radio!

Heading off early in the morning we crossed to the north of Martinique to visit St Pierre. This town was originally referred to as "the Little Paris of the Caribbean" but the eruption of Mt Pelee in 1902 meant that within 10 minutes almost all the 30,000 population were killed and there was total devastation of the town which has never recovered. Today you can still see the blackened ruins of some of the buildings, visit the solitary confinement cell in the prison where the only survivor was locked away (he was a pretty nasty chap so it doesn't seem very fair) and see the museum containing photos of before & after, and various artefacts from both the buildings in town and the significant number of wrecks from boats sunk all over the bay.

We met up with Boundless who had Sue's daughters on board in St Pierre and after finally tracking down the customs post to check out (it was in a bar!) we found a very curious restaurant for dinner - for the fixed price menu of EUR14 you got 3 (good) courses, plus the glasses, ingredients and rum to pour your own Ti-punch cocktails plus a dark rum digestiv - BARGAIN! Though once you have one Ti-punch you don't tend to go for a second....

Then on Friday we worked our way across to Dominica with Boundless and after a quiet night, have booked a tour for today around the island to visit some of the spectacular waterfalls and rainforest....