Welcome to the Caribbean
17 February 2016
Virginia and Dennis Johns
Wed Feb 3 As we mentioned in our prior blog post, the Atlantic Odyssey rally had arranged a Rum tasting tour for the group on Wed, which we missed having only arrived that morning. But late in the day a group of locals paraded down the pontoon where all the Odyssey boats were moored with one of the colorful and musical parades that were happening all over the island for the start of Carnaval.
Thu Feb 4 We were able to participate in the Discovery Day activities the following Thursday. We took a bus to Trois Ilets, a museum site that depicted a typical slave savanna. A slave savanna was a small residence that was established by former slaves after slavery was abolished in 1848. We then went back to Le Marin and had a typical Creole lunch at a small restaurant on the beach. Following that we were invited to participate in sailing traditional Yoles - big wooden canoe style hull with a brightly colored square sail which is steered by humans shifting their weight from one side to the other and some sitting on poles extending about 6 feet out the side of the boat. There wasn't much wind, but the locals got two of the yoles going - each full of willing participants of all ages. Our crew, Steve and Jim, represented Libertad.
Thursday night, the rally organizers and the Martinique Office of Tourism provided a farewell party at the Mango Bay Restaurant, a short walk from the marina. A sumptuous, three course meal was served followed by speeches and an awards presentation to every rally participant. Virginia received a special award for becoming the single, default SSB net controller as all other controllers travelled faster and moved out of range of most of the SSB net participants. Her sweet voice over the radio waves enticed other Atlantic crossers who were not in our official group to join our net after tuning in each morning. We finally met some of them after arriving in Martinique.
Sun Feb 7 was the start of Carnaval. Colin on Persevere arranged for a bus to pick us up at the marina and take us to the ferry where they then took us across the bay to Fort du France for the opening ceremonial parade. Unfortunately our crew had left on a flight very early that morning so they missed out on the fun. The parade went on forever. They had several floats, lots of bands - mostly drums, lots of dancers. It was very colorful and festive. The parade was so long we had to work our way back along the route (towards the ferry dock) to see the bulk of it and avoid missing our return ferry. There were costume shops all along the street and many in the crowd were decked out in Carnaval dress. The big thing was neon colored items -net ballet skirts and gloves, leg warmers, hats, and ties - all being worn by women and men alike, including the ballet skirts. Virginia had recently purchased some of these same neon items for an 80's theme party back in Santa Barbara and was wishing she had them along. As we worked our way towards the end of the parade, it became clear that all those who were previously sidewalk-anchored spectators, were collapsing into the street and dancing along with drum bands either ahead or behind them. It rained, but very lightly and very briefly. We took the ferry back in the evening and the bus was waiting to deliver us back to the marina.
Mon Feb 8 For the next few days we prepared for our trip south to Grenada, emailing Spice Island Marina Services to confirm our reservation, doing a bit of provisioning, catching up on bill paying while we had internet, checking the weather. We had several group dinners aboard Libertad, saying farewell to friends - some of whom we hope to catch up with next season.
Thu Feb 11 We left the marina around 0930 heading south to Grenada. We originally developed a route with just three legs of 50-60 nm each. But for some reason the first leg really exhausted us. We sailed the windward side of St. Lucia to an anchorage on the south end and had good wind for sailing, but also a lot of those confused Atlantic swells. We might have been missing our extra crew to help with the sail changes and such as we were both exhausted and Virginia had gotten a bit nauseous - a rare occurrence these days. Also, we departed a little late for a 60 mile leg and arrived at the anchorage just after sunset. The anchorage was a little rolly with a strong wind blowing through, so we weren't guaranteed an uninterrupted evening. We actually re-anchored at midnight and Dennis was up a few more times during the night on anchor watch. So in the morning we revised our plan and designed a route with shorter legs. We posted a position and short blog post at each anchorage so we won't repeat them all here.
The trip south to Grenada gave us a feeling for what sailing in the Caribbean will be like next year. On the windward side of the islands you are in the Atlantic and since the trade winds are generally coming from the east you get consistent wind to sail and swell. On the leeward side of the islands you have variable wind. We had nice steady sailing winds when making a passage between islands, some gusting and change of wind direction at the ends of islands, and no wind at all if it was a tall mountainous island and was blocking all the wind. While there might be some chop, we had no swells to speak of on the leeward side.
Mon Feb 15 we arrived in Prickly Bay. We spent two nights at the small Prickly Bay Marina preparing the boat to be hauled. The first night we ate ashore at the marina restaurant as they were having pizza night and had good free wifi. We took a taxi to a bank in town to get the local currency EC$ (eastern Caribbean) and to drop by the boatyard to get a better idea of the location of the lift. We primarily are on the boat doing all our 'storage' chores, making lists of what we need to take home and what equipment we need to order and bring back with us, and using the internet to arrange flights home. We'll have to tour Grenada and all the islands we anchored at enroute here next season when we return.
Wed Feb 17 We are hauling out Libertad at Spice Island Marine Services yard this morning at 10:00.
Fri Feb 19 We will be flying back to California (Grenada to Trinidad to Miami to Houston to LAX).