We made it to St. Anne, Martinique. It wasn’t pretty. It was many things.
It was Fifty Shades of Grey: We left with the threat of rain around us, and at one point the whole world around us was monochromatic. The bright spots of colours were provided by our yellow rain slickers (it is too warm for us to want to wear full foul weather gear), the red and white Canadian flag, and the green of our canvas. It was actually quite beautiful at some points, when it didn’t look like it was going to rain on us.

Fifty Shades of Wind: We left Rodney Bay with about 20 knots of wind from a seemingly favourable angle. It tended to go more north as we progressed across the St. Lucia channel that separates Martinique and St. Lucia. The wind also died to about 7 knots, but sprung back to life with a maximum gust of about 28 knots.

Fifty Shades of Frustrating: With the wind as variable as it seemed to be, it was a bit of give and take and experimentation. At one point it was just as easy to motor straight into the waves, as the wind was pretty much non-existent. At another point, we had to steer more than 60 degrees off our course as straight motoring was not going to be an option. We tacked a few times as well, and eventually made our way in, but we were doing a lot of second guessing of our strategies on the way.
We also ended up trying to anchor a couple of times before we were happy. The bottom in St. Anne has a lot of turtle grass, so you have to look for the light green patches to make sure the anchor has sand to dig into. The visibility today was less than great, so the patches were much harder to see.

Fifty Shades of Humbug: Ken and I are both battling head colds, and so far, it seems like the bug may have the upper hand. The decongestant we have was giving Ken a bad time (nervousness and other more funky side effects), so I managed to get him a nasal spray before we headed out this morning. Neither one of us was feeling particularly chipper today. This was not a pleasure trip, this was just trying to get to the other side.

Fifty Shades of Shadiness: We knew it was time to get rid of our dinghy and get a new one. The patching jobs that I had attempted in Grenada didn’t work, and the dinghy was actually taking in water faster than before. It had also developed some new tube leaks, so the air pump had to always be handy. We went to an inflatable guy in Rodney Bay that had just what we were looking for, or so he led us to believe. The aluminum bottomed RIB with the 17” tubes that was rated to 15 hp ended up being rated for 8 hp, had 16” tubes, and was not what we wanted. We went to Island Water World instead. However, even there, the “new” dinghy we were going to purchase looked like it had been a floor model (outside) and it had bits starting to peel off already… but they were willing to offer 12% off the price! No thanks, we will take the one that doesn’t look like it has already been used. Unfortunately, in our haste, we now know that it is missing a few things that we would like to have on a dinghy, like a front lift ring.
However, the sun came out, we almost caught a green flash with the camera, it only took us about 2 hours more than normal to get here, including anchoring, and we arrived safely and with no problems rather than uncooperative winds!
Tomorrow I will go for a run (cold or no cold), get a baguette for breakfast, get us checked into the country with Customs and Immigration, and we will settle into some time here in Martinique. With the Christmas Trades roaring in, there isn’t anywhere we are in a rush to be now.