Heading north again
16 February 2014 | St Pierre, Martinique
Gary
We left Rodney Bay at 7AM we headed for the west coast of Martinique. The weather forecast gave us a 2-3 day weather window where the winds would moderate a bit AND clock a bit to the south of east. Since this time of year usually sees NE winds this was a gift. Added to that, with the moderated winds came flatter seas. For the 32 miles between the islands we had wind from abeam (perpendicular to the boat - giving good speed) at 15-18 mph and 4' seas. So we sailed at close to 10 mph until we got a ways past the south end of Martinique. We pulled into St Pierre (on the NW coast) before 3PM.
St Pierre is famous due to the eruption of Mt Pelee on Ascension Day in 1902. The eruption killed everyone in town except 2 people - a man in the town jail & a cobbler who was in his basement. We had no time to stay however as we had our weather window to get north. So we didn't even take Windy to shore and hauled anchor before 6:30AM the next day. Suddenly we found ourselves part of a six boat "fleet" leaving St Pierre heading north.
Heading for Dominica we had good winds (though not quite as good as the previous day) & seas but more importantly we weren't pounding straight into them. Our weather window was still good. While making the 26 miles between Martinique we averaged almost 10 mph - pretty fast considering we have our entire home with us. Even though the winds died &/or came from various directions due to Dominica's mountains, we still made Portsmouth - the far NW bay of the island - by early afternoon.
The picture is of Windy at her usual (anchored) guard spot, except we were in the lee side of Martinique on open water.