07/08/2009, Martinique
Martinique
Jimmy said it best today as we were walking around with our tongues hanging out as we stared at all of the modern buildings, cars and smartly dressed French girls and as our olfactory senses were bombarded with the wonderful smells of fresh croissants, baguettes and pastries,
"What a difference 63 miles can make, huh Dad?"
We had left beautiful, green, Dominica, with its friendly but poor people at 6:00pm and slowly sailed south under the lee of the island. When we hit the Martinique channel (a 20 mile cut between the islands of Dominica and Martinique) we were suddenly, and I do mean suddenly, hit with 18 to 20 knot winds and huge Atlantic rollers rushing through that little cut. The boat suddenly went from a slow and calm sail that the little boys said was just like being anchored to a wild offshore ride under double reefed main and a little tiny jib, where Mom, Dad and Jimmy took turns hand steering. For those of you following our adventure so far... yeah our little string we now use for an auto pilot just couldn't cut the mustard in those conditions, but to be fair I am not sure the actual auto pilot would have handled it either.
Our intrepid and stalwart sailor, Mom, who has not been seasick since the passage out of Luperon, succumbed to the malady again as her body rebelled to the sudden crazy change in motion. She was truly miserable but just think of it this way... you are driving in your car down a beautiful country lane and suddenly without warning you are on Space mountain at Disneyland. It was a little disconcerting.
We arrived in Fort De France at 8:00am and rested for the rest of the day. Our take so far on the French Islands is,
"Wow! Don't miss them! They make check in a breeze with a simple computer program and NO FEES! And who doesn't like fresh French breads and CHEESE for breakfast?"
Today we all wandered around the island looking in the shops and trying not to spend money... they use the EURO here so suddenly we went from pretty cheap food to fairly expensive. Beck and I went on a little expedition to find new batteries for her camera. It was fun to try to find any specific place without the ability to speak French. We found it though and made a lot of people smile as they tried to help us. YES, French people do smile, at least on the island.
Well the plan is to sail to a little Bay south of here to spend the night tomorrow and then we will continue offshore to Carriacou where we will check in to the Grenadines and Grenada. From there we are only a short sail across to Trinidad where we will be meeting up with Beck's sister Amy and niece Ellie who we are SOOOO excited to see again in just a few weeks.
God Bless,
Captain Tofer and the Crew
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Comments [2]
07/04/2009, Prince Rupert Bay, Dominica
Well the crew of Wandering Dolphin is really loving Dominica. We are eating fresh fruits and veggies every day along with fresh bread and eggs all for very reasonable prices. The folks here are very friendly and the kids have started making a few local friends at the little beach.
The day before yesterday we went on a tour up the Indian River with Alexis. He is a local man who does tours and also helps cruisers out with things they need while anchored here. He was very knowledgeable and taught us all about the plants and animals living in this beautiful, protected, rainforest river. The flowers were out of this world!
This morning we woke up early so we could make it to the Farmer's Market in the early hours while the best stuff was still out. There were already a couple of hundred people and every kind of produce you can imagine. We spent about $23.00 US and came back to the boat with, 2 watermelons, 20 limes, a bunch of carrots, bag of sugar cane, a huge bunch of green bananas, 25 potatoes, 6 mangos, 4 cucumbers, 8 Avocados, 1 coconut, 2 passion fruit, cabbage, as well as a bag of fresh baked buns. We have been a long time in the Islands now so maybe we are thinking this is a great deal... it seems like it to us after St Thomas where all of that would have been like $75 bucks.
We are looking at the weather and getting set up to head on down to the Grenadines when we get a nice 36 hour opening.
God Bless and Happy 4th of July!
Captain Tofer
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06/29/2009, Prince Rupert Bay, Dominica
Hi Everyone!
We are in Dominica! What a beautiful island full if jungle, rivers, flowers and high Mountains dripping with GREEN. The locals all seem friendly and after a 3 day offshore sail our kids are glad to be here.
When we left St Thomas we sailed to St Johns and then on to the BVI's where we checked out Jost Van Dyke and then Virgin Gorda. The kids loved the Baths at Virgin Gorda. They wanted to stay for a while but Wandering Dolphin had to hit the high seas for a few days to make it south. We sailed to Dominica with a lot of tacking and a lot of miles doing less than 4 knots. It has been great to sail all the way down here only running the engine to enter an anchorage.
As I told you all before we have no auto pilot... our intention was to hand steer all the way, alas... necessity is truly the mother of invention... I was on my very first half hour hand steering into 6 foot swells out of Virgin Gorda when I remembered Joshua Slocum sailing around the world by balancing his boat with his sails and tieing off his helm... I thought... "well it's worth a try..." Within an hour the boat was sailing along with only a little piece of string as it's auto pilot. Rebecca took over on her watch and proceeded to fine tune my system into a workable tieng arrangement that allowed us to adjust the helm upwind or down wind with the movement of the string on the wheel spoke. LOL we sailed the whole way just like we had an auto pilot... and best of all it uses NO power at all!!!!
We will come in in the next few days and add some more stories from our passage. Thanks for praying and keeping us in your thoughts. We are all well and safe.
God Bless,
Captain Tofer
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