02/08/2010, Warm!
A beautiful sunny morning, very calm winds.
A quick cup of coffee and up with the main, raise anchor and we are motoring out of our bay.
This will be good bye to Martinique for now, we both are looking forward to another visit.
Very calm winds until we pass the northern part of of island and head into the channel with Dominica almost directly to our north. Kyle has been sailing all day, right now we are 5 hours into the trip and I've watched him in action all day. Our winds have been as high at 20+ knots with favorable direction to just the opposite - and all the while he keeps us on course, sailing as fast and comfortably as possible. *He's awesome, if I haven't mentioned that lately :)
We are now looking at Dominica,
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02/07/2010, Warm!
Saturday we wake to a beautiful sunny morning.
We decide to explore Marine a bit more today, with the hopes of checking in through Customs, finding a grocery store and another great french meal....
We dinghy in and find customs, it's a one stop check-in, all computerized (we are used to a lot of writing -by us and stamping - by the officials) with no need to see immigration, wow, that was nice.
Next we make our way through a Saturday market, made a big loop and finally found our first grocery store. We made a quick round through the store and decided to pass on buying anything - the clencher was when I picked up a box of coco crispies and it was brick hard.
Back to ITW, relaxing, showering and back to town for dinner. We had a wonderful dinner at the same spot we had found for lunch the day before.
Happy, full and ready for some zzz's
Sunday we are up early and ready for a new view - we are sailing up the west coast of Martinique to St. Pierre.
We had a very mild weather day, calm to no wind and a 6 hour leisurely motor/sail to our next stop.
Anchor and away into town... St. Pierre lies at the foot of Mt. Pelee' volcano. The town has quite the history, a bustling little town known as the Paris of the Caribbean, until the volcano blew in 1902 and left only 2 survivors taking with it almost 30,000 people.
Many ruins remain and the town was re-built over alot of the old structures. It is interesting... there are so much history to these islands and culturally they vary very much... here we are in Martinique where French is the language and you pay for things in Euro's!
We found an internet cafe' which also doubles as Customs so we had 20 minutes to do our emails and check-out (again, a piece of cake :)) before they close.
We have a few hours before dinner will be started in the restaurants so we head back to the boat to shower and play a few hands of rummy... that worked - back to town and an ok dinner and a decent bottle of Codes De Rhone (things have a way of balancing out).
Cheers, and loving you all.... XO B&K
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02/05/2010, Warm
A beautiful morning to set sail to Martinique, after a quick stop at the mini mart for some provisions we are soon casting off our lines from the dock. I have Brenda drive ITW out of the harbor and by 9 AM we have rounded the corner, had our egg sandwich and are raising the sails for the 20 NM crossing.
The winds were slightly better than forecast as we were seeing a consistent 12 to 15 knots from the East and 1 to 3' NE seas and cruising at 6 ish knots towards Marin. We enter Cul-de-sac du Marin and decide to anchor in the bay where we can hopefully have some breeze through the hatches. Shortly after 1 PM we are in the dinghy (love my new Mercury 15 HP outboard) and tied off to the dock. A short walk up the street and we find the perfect little French Bistro for a wonderful lunch of lobster salad and a rich cream based fish soup that was to die for, all washed down with a nice bottle of French Rose, we are happy sailors!
We take a little stroll around the shops by the pier, find Diginav to see if they have a Super Wind generator in stock, nope, supposed to arrive from France on Monday and maybe available Tuesday, ugh, I guess we will have to find one somewhere else or pick one up on the way back through in April. We didn't find anyone at Customs to check in so back to ITW to read our books, a couple episodes of NCIS, some awesome sunset pictures and a gourmet dinner of Cocoa Puffs before lights out and a restful night sleep on the hook in Cul-de-sac du Marin.
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02/03/2010, Rodney Bay
Weather Report: Sunny, beautiful with a slight breeze, mid 80's.
Comfortably back in our morning routine, coffee, dueling computers and a once over of cleaning and little boat repairs.
We venture out to pick up our rental car. We headed north to a beautiful resort Kyle had found but they were not serving lunch for at least another hour, so plan B and we drove back to a nice lunch spot here at the marina. We shared a salad and the biggest serving of ribs ever!
Back to the car and we head south then east as we make our way across the island and enjoying our path through the rain forest. St. Lucia is a beautiful island, 27 miles long & 14 miles wide, with so much varied terrain! The roads are in nice condition, but it is a continuous path of climbing, cornering & braking... At one spot we drove up and down a 15% grade with more hairpin corners than you could count.
We stopped south of Soufriere at the Pitons which had a nature attraction of a 'drive-in volcano'. We arrived at Sulfur Springs and paid a fee took on a personal guide and explored what turned out to be St. Lucia's version of a mini Yellowstone Park. I loved it, my husband has now took me to the Grand Tetons and now the Pitons!
Back to the journey.... many many more turns, climbs and corners and scenery which is incredibly beautiful.
We stopped and shopped before arriving back home, finding a store which was like a mini costco (oh, nice!)
A great relaxing night and a wonderful night sleep, yes another incredible day!
Love you all, Brenda & Kyle
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02/02/2010, Souferie
The First-Mate is back!! And here goes....
Weather Report: A mixed bag, partly cloudy and a few brief rainstorms, but for the most part, beautiful & sunny.
I arrived in St. Thomas via Delta Airlines on Sunday at 3pm, greeted by my loving Husband & Captain, ahhh, I needed that!
Kyle had a jeep rented, so he started the drive to ITW. Miles of corners and one stop for a light dinner, and we arrived in Soufriere Bay. A quick dinghy ride and it's home sweet home, Caribbean style :)
Kyle had quite the sail up to St Lucia, bashing into waves and the boat was still covered in too much salt for me. From the past blogs you get the theme, daily cleanings or this place goes from great to not so fresh - fast!!
Kyle and I decide the only way to get this ship shape fast we need to sail up north to a marina so we have all the services we need.
An early night, as we are both tired and it's off to dream land as we discuss our next day...
Monday morning, up with a quick rain burst, then we packed the back pack and headed to town to return the rental jeep and get me checked on the boat through immigration.
We set sail at 10:30am with Rodney Bay as the next destination. We had a good 3 hour sail that quickly got my sea legs back in order 20 nm, 1 - 3 ft seas, winds between 10 & 20 knots gusts up to 30. Arriving in Rodney Bay we navigated a slip at the Marina, happily hooked up our hose to the fresh water and got ITW back to it's cleaned & fresh feel.
Tuesday greeted us with a morning shower, so out of bed, and in with the coffee! We also thankfully had a period of uninterrupted wifi, so we worked on emails and that brought us to planning and charting our time for the next 3 weeks before flying home next on Feb 22nd. We are going to be flying out of St Thomas so we figured thats 21 days to sail & explore, and 350 nm to log on this leg of the journey.
We spent the remainder of our day with lunch, shopping, chatting, and just enjoying each other and where we are...
Another day well spent.... Cheers & Hugs, Brenda & Kyle
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01/28/2010
Up at 6 AM with the sun, have my coffee, check the weather forecast - 17 - 23 knot winds from the east - perfect, and 6 to 8 ft. seas from the NNE, not so perfect. I go over my plan, decide on two reefs in the main, release the port stern line, put the engines in forward gear, release the starboard mooring line and then the port mooring line, back to the helm with engines in neutral and then release the starboard stern line, forward propulsion and I am soon clearing the reef. Bring in the fenders, let out the dinghy and head around the southern end of the island into the wind for the next hour with both Yanmar's humming away. I continue out about 4 NM from the windward shore, a slight adjustment to keep into the wind, raise the main with two reefs, steer to port and fly the genoa. From 4 knots to 7 plus in the matter of minutes and I am sailing to St. Lucia. After I clear the north end of St. Vincent I am seeing up to 28 knots of wind going from E to ENE and the seas are building. I have already taken a couple wraps on the genoa so I got up front and set the 3rd reef and lower the main sail another 10 feet.
Mother nature couldn't make up her mind as the winds shifted around to allow me to stay right on course to falling off 20 degrees. Beating into the building seas I am not in 8 to 12 feet on my bow, the first wave that crashed over the forepeak was dead on and I was instantly soaking wet. At that particular moment I realized that I closed all but one hatch, the small top side hatch mid way and over my books, needless to say I had about an inch of water on the cabinet and floor. A quick clean up and back to the helm. Boat speed was doing great at 6 to 7 knots and I was on my plan to arrive in Vieux Fort in about 8 hours. I bashed head on into the seas and I can say I have never got as wet, we had bigger seas crossing the South Atlantic, but they were mostly following us. We got bashed pretty hard going from Trinidad to Tobago, but the seas were smaller and we were dead into the wind, it was really a Let R' Buck Ride, and not for 8 seconds. About 6 hours into the passage I decided that it was just starting to get to me, so I calculated a new plan, turned to port 25 degrees and made sail for Soufriere, about another hour up the coast. With the new corse adjustment I was no longer bashing into the seas and was able to let out the genoa and cruise 7 to 8 knots for the last 2 or so hours. By 4 PM ITW was on a mooring ball ( it is a protected area and limited anchoring, I was showered and headed to Soufriere to check into St. Lucia, an easy task and down in less than an hour, a short walk around town to purchase a country flag (somehow St. Lucia was not on my list when I purchased all my flags). Off to a corner bar to order fish and chips (didn't eat for the passage as I knew it could possibly be rough) a couple Heinekens to wash it down and then back to ITW to lower the Q Flag and raise the St. Lucia country flag.
I now sit in a beautiful little bay, a cold Corona within reach, a full belly and the accomplishment of letting the lines ( all 4) go from the dock and bashing / sailing for almost 50 NM and 9 hours on ITW solo. I have taken here out by myself for a couple short jaunts, but this is now a fist for me and In The Wind together.
Tomorrow, I rent a car, drive to Rodney Bay on the North end, pick up my new 15 HP Mercury outboard and see what St. Lucia is all about.
Cheers from Soufriere and In The Wind ;)
PS - My First Mate arrives Sunday, I can't wait.........
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