04/12/2011, Rodney Bay St. Lucia
We are in French country after all ! - so every town /village should have a bakery - don't you think ?? Therefore this morning, Jill and myself "dingied" to shore at 7AM to look for it (me hoping for [un grand cafe]and maybe having a look at the weather forecast..)..
but guess what : - no bakery - no internet - nada ! :-(
- this is what tourism does to this poor indigenous - they loose "all" there traditions - so it turns out none of the beach restaurants (about 8-10) will open until noon ...
They did have two stores opening at 7:30, that would sell us a baguette , eggs and some onions for our breakfast on the boat.
We left the anchorage around 9AM heading towards St Lucia ... usually the 22nm run should take us 3-4 Hours, but today for whatever reason we had the wind on our nose ... on top of that it was only blowing 5-6 knts ..No way I'm going to try to tack this ....
So there we were, motoring at 4.5 knts towards St Lucia against the current (but no swell) .. About midway through the passage the trades remembered there origins and turned a bit west at 10 knts - just enough for us to hoist sails and sail the last 10 nm. Because there was barley any swell we made good progress at +- 6knts.
The weather forecast for the coming days is not looking too promising - rain rain and more rain - with winds around 5-7 knts ... = truly a crappy forecast for our upcoming crossing between St Lucia and ST Vincent for Saturday.
We will be staying at Rodney Bay Marina for a couple nights (doing laundry, washing the boat, filling up water and doing some other small chores that have piled up during the past month or so)
| Jan 25th - May2nd 2011 |
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04/11/2011, Anse D'Arlet , Martinique
We left Fort De France short after 9:30 AM and moved over to Anse Noir where we spent most of the day - The snorkeling could have been good but Jill discovered a bunch of small hydroids- nematocyst that made her uncomfortable ( and she would know) so not much snorkeling got done...
We moved around 2PM to our night anchorage at Grand Anse D'Arlet where it promptly started to rain as we were about to drop the Anchor . and it hasn't stopped since ! ( (lots and lots of rain)
We were supposed to have one last French dinner ashore for this season but I guess we are "cooking" tonight ...
The anchorage has lots of boats but I would assume the restaurants won't get much (if any) business out of this crowd tonight.
Jill is complaining about some of our hatches leaking on her scrabble game ( need to replace some of the seals - really no surprise after 10 years) . She is playing against herself - not sure who's currently winning :-).
Hopefully the rain will move past us over night as I have not much interest in making the crossing into St Lucia under these conditions.
| Jan 25th - May2nd 2011 |
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04/10/2011, Martinique
We actually did make it to Port De France today ...so far nothing to impressing .. We did have a stroll in the city - but everything seems to be closed on Sunday :-(
I'm still feeling very sick and Jill is showing fist signs of withdraw from snorkeling.(we have not been "in the water" ( we do shower) for at least 4 days)
As hard as we try, Martinique just doesn't seem to grab us ..
As mentioned before tomorrow we will check out of Martinique for Tuesday
Monday afternoon we will head over to a small bay south of Fort de France where there is supposed to be decent snorkeling to be found... we will see..
- No decent Internet :-( :-(
Darn- Jill is now starting to show signs of an approaching cold also :-( :-(
| Jan 25th - May2nd 2011 |
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Also looking at your blog from time to time (about once a month) when I look at all my important old e-mail messages which I dont dare to delete!
BTW, happy birthday to you, George. A bit late, I know, but then I am also still awaiting your wishes for the last few years :-) and at least this leads me to post a note here.
Hope you enjoy your journey despite your cold or boring Martinique.
Have a good time and come visit us in Salzburg once, no beaches, but nice little place too!
Adrian & family
Today it hit me in that the trip for this year will be coming to an end soon ... hard to imagine going back to live (work) on land at this point :-)
04/10/2011, St Pierre , Martinique
I somehow managed to get sick - came down with a cold ...
This "must" have been the result from the day we got soaked walking to the waterfalls and me as the only one going for a swim..
Yesterday we ventured out for a short hike to find a butterfly garden - we found the garden, but it was small and not well maintained (5Ec / person seemed a bit over the top) ..we got some exercise in :-)
St Pierre is the town that was destroyed back in 1902 by an eruption of Mt Pelee - 30,000 people where killed by poisoned gas and hot air within 30 sec they say. The town and all the ships in the bay burned to the ground withing hours afterward.
We might move to Fort de France today or early tomorrow - check out and should be in St Lucia no later then Tuesday...
| Jan 25th - May2nd 2011 |
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04/08/2011, Saint Pierre, Martinique
This morning, we had a very fast crossing into Martinique. Winds were steady above 20knts on a close haul against rough seas. With both, main and head sail reefed we hardly ever dropped below 8knts. Right from the start, we had some competition ahead of us, but once we hit the channel we past them within 1/2 hour easily.. In reality they should have been able to keep up with us, but maybe they didn't feel comfortable with the rough swell. Who knows ... Today we left at 7Am for our hike to the famous boiling lake ....
We arrived in St Pierre around 1 PM - checked in and now have some rest ...
Not sure what we will do tomorrow, but we might head south towards Fort De France ......
The picture was actually taken yesterday while hiking up to Boiling lakes
Two things:
A) I checked today but it doesn't seem like the facial did give me that promised baby like skin .... must have put my finger in the wrong puddle ...
B) The gully / stream in the back of the picture is actually "our" trail in and out of this valley
Jan 25th - May2nd 2011
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04/07/2011, Dominica Roussau
We were accompanied by our guide (Sea Cat) and his dog & another sailing couple from Canada.
We started walking around 8Am and returned short after 2PM ... The guide estimated the distance 7mile each way .. but that's not the fun part about this particular hike.... You go Up and Down- Up Up Up and then Down Down Down and you get to do this pretty much all day long :-)
They put wooden steps in all the way along the 7 mile hike otherwise it would be nearly impossible to do as it is super steep and can be super muddy at times..(it reminded me of ski conditioning at times)
Jill and myself where walking in our standard Caribbean hiking outfit- no rain gear - Flip flops for Jill and Teva's for Georg
It ended up being so muddy, that Jill walked probably half the trail barefoot ...
Bottom line is: We had a great time and really enjoyed the trip.
The picture shows Jill and our guide at the boiling lakes - please notice the free facial we all got as we passed some bubbling mud baths on the way in.
(the guide actually boiled us some eggs for a late breakfast in one of the steaming volcanic outlets)
For those of you who have been at Yellowstone - this is how it's like -just without the fences and the warning signs not to walk across the area... at times, you really wonder if the ground is actually going to hold as it feels a bit soft around certain steaming outlets
Jan 25th - May2nd 2011
Comments [5]
I wanna go to this awesome place with YOU!
