Sail Aweh (Posts about fort-de-france)

Marin

Stefano Rivera — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

We were on a roll now, and keen to keep moving South. So, we got up at 6am to depart, but realised our anchor was underneath another boat and we'd need them to move before we could pull it up and leave. Fortunately, someone on that boat got up to have a pee off the stern, and we got his attention. Turned out, he didn't need to move, after all :)

We motor-sailed all the way into Le Marin, because the winds were ahead of us for a lot of it. We were luck, and caught the tides fairly well, through the bay.

As we were coming past Rocher du Diamant, the local cruiser's net started up on the radio, and we got advised to try to see a doctor based in the Marin marina. He was known to be willing to see sailors at short notice.

Cul-de-sac du Marin is an enormous anchorage, and well protected. Sometimes too protected, it gets hot. We anchored quite far back, just inside the channel where there's more wind. I think we may do this again in the future.

The doctor saw me, and suggested trying to remove the remaining spines with a hyperdermic needle and some tweezers. But this was too big of a job for him to do, we'd have to handle it ourselves. Helpfully, he prescribed some crutches, which made the next weeks a lot easier. Should have got some much earlier!

At the local chandlery, we bought the bits to make up a new snubber line. And we picked up a (low-cost, but hard to find) engine part for a fellow sailor, to carry to Carriacou. We'd heard about this request on the cruiser's net that morning.

Time on the water: 3:48
Distance covered: 22.8nm
Avg speed: 6kts
Max speed: 9.7kts
Crew: John, Stefano

Navionics Track

To Martinique

Stefano Rivera — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

We weren't stopping in Dominica, just overnighting on the way down. So, we awoke at 4am to depart again. We set the 1st reef on the main sail, because the weather prediction was for some reasonable wind.

Dominica looked spectacular in the morning sunlight, we'll have to come back here, next year.

We were treated to a pod of dolphins jumping, hard at work fishing. Later, in the north of the Martinique channel, some whales breaching.

It got quite gusty in the channel, we ended up on the staysail for most of it. Once behind Martinique, suddenly we were becalmed again, and motored into St. Pierre on what looked like a mill-pond. There, there were more dolphins at work.

The check-in computer in St. Pierre is at a restaurant, so we'd hoped to get lunch there, but sadly they were fully booked. So, back to the boat.

I wasn't walking, but could get around on our folding bicycle, with some help.

Our throttle handle got loose, somewhere on the way in. It got cleaned up and reattached later, but there was a temporary pair of vice-grips as throttle, that day.

We continued on down to Fort de France, motoring. The French Antilles have a lot of lobster pots in the sea, that you have to keep an eye open for. You don't want to get the line from one wrapped around your propeller. I was so busy watching out for lobster pots, that I missed a little sailboat that got incredibly close to us. Whoops!

Fort de France was very crowded. We ended up anchored right in the corner of the anchorage, where the ferries come past you at high speed.

Time on the water: 12:36
Distance covered: 67.7nm
Avg speed: 5.4kts
Max speed: 11.3kts
Crew: John, Stefano

Navionics Track

St. Pierre, again

Stefano Rivera — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

After an early morning vegetable market run in Fort de France, we went for a hike with taffit and Cathy in the Savane des Pétrifications park at the South-East tip of Martinique.

Doug almost got snowed-in, in New York, his flight cancelled. But he managed to find a flight out of the city in time, and via a few stops made his original connection from Guadeloupe to Martinique. We picked him up at the airport, on the way back from the hike.

The next morning, after returning the hire car and getting Doug a pre-departure COVID test for Guadeloupe, we sailed up the coast back towards St. Pierre.

We got maybe half an hour of sailing on the genoa, before stopping for lunch and a quick snorkel off Case Pilote, and then motored up to St. Pierre to check out of Martinique. Almost everywhere is closed on the island on Sundays, but there's a customs computer in a bar in St. Pierre that's open, and it's the perfect departure point for trips north.

We had considered spending the night off Dominica, but it felt a little too late in the day to make that trip, so we'll anchor here for the night and depart early in the morning for Guadeloupe.

Time on the water: 2:06
Distance covered: 12.1nm
Avg speed: 5.7kts
Max speed: 9.4kts
Crew: John, Clare, Stefano, Doug

Navionics Track

Down to Fort de France

Stefano Rivera — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Our stay in Martinique is nearing its end. We're picking up my friend Doug in Martinique this weekend, and then plan to sail up to Guadeloupe with him.

So, back to Fort de France, to do some provisioning and collect Doug.

It's a short sail, so we didn't lift the main, and just used the genoa to carry is back down the coast. Towards the end we got tighter into the wind and motored into the city anchorage. Clare took us into the anchorage, she's learning the ropes of taking the wheel while anchoring, but we had bad luck and it took a couple of attempts to set it.

We weren't able to find a car to hire in the city, online, and instead took the city ferry (our nemesis) across the bay to Pointe du Bout, which is more touristy and has cars for hire. So we were able to do a big provisioning at the Carrefour.

We drove down to meet up with taffit in Marin, who was celebrating completing his MSc exams that he had to take at 4am. At the bar, we ran into Rebecca and Michael of Brickhouse, and caught up on their recent adventures. A boat they are buddy-sailing with recently got boarded by armed robbers, off St. Vincent. The robbers visited Brickhouse before that, but Rebecca heard them and shooed them away. This happened in Buccament Bay just North of Petit Byahaut, a day or two after we visited the area. Unfortunately, incidents like this mean many sailors will continue to avoid the main island of St. Vincent, which really needs the tourism. The locals are apparently furious.

Time on the water: 2:35
Distance covered: 12.3nm
Avg speed: 4.8kts
Max speed: 9.7kts
Crew: John, Stefano, Clare

Navionics Track

Les Trois Ilets

Stefano Rivera — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

After the hubbub of St. Vincent, and the push back up to Fort de France to drop off Connor and Robin, we had a lazy few days anchored off the city.

The hourly ferries tried their level best to shake us to death with their wake, so when a spot opened up a bit further back into the anchorage, we moved up to get out of their way.

When the Volcano in Tonga exploded, like many observers around the world, we saw a pressure-wave pass multiple times, over the next days:

The pressure usually rises and falls over the day, in a rough sine-curve. The sudden spikes up and down are the pressure wave. (Ignore the colour change in the graph, that was me reconfiguring data retention in InfluxDB.)

After a good week in Fort de France, it was time for some more exploring. We started with a very lazy motor down to Les Trois-Ilets. Along the way we practiced a hat-overboard drill, but we couldn't get quite close enough so John ended up diving in to pick it up.

The bottom in Les Trois-Ilets was quite muddy and we couldn't get the anchor to hold very well, so we just stayed for lunch, and then motored around the peninsula to Anse Mitan, where we dropped anchor for the night, near the Frederyk Chopin.

The next day we explored explored the town a bit. There are the ruins of the fort at Pointe du Bout, that was converted into a theatre, at some point mid-20th century, and is now decaying again.

Time on the water: 2:17
Distance covered: 7.7nm
Avg speed: 3.4kts
Max speed: 7.1kts
Crew: John, Stefano, Clare

Navionics Track

Smooth sailing to Martinique

Stefano Rivera — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

With alarms set for 4am, we set off early from Chateaubelair, for Martinique. The air was pretty still, and we were expecting light winds (forecast was gusts of up to 17kts), so we pulled up full sails, and motored out until we could pick up some wind.

From then, we flew North, at 9-12kts, most of the way, a lot faster than we expected with such light wind. There were a couple of times we had to motor-sail for half an hour in the wind-shadow behind St. Lucia, but that was it.

We were very briefly visited by some dolphins, and passed a pod of whales. Sorry, no photos of either.

Connor tried trolling a fishing line behind us, for an hour or two, but we didn't catch anything.

Fort de France would be more convenient for getting Connor and Robin to the airport than Le Marin, so we headed straight there. This is an easier sail, than Le Marin, because the course wouldn't be quite so close to the wind. Making it round Saint Lucia and to Le Marin in a single tack can be tricky.

Behind the cliffs at Cap Salomon, Martinique, we were in wind-shadow again, and so motored across the bay up to the Fort de France anchorage, arriving around 2pm. This is a lovely anchorage, right outside the city, at the base of the old fort. It can be a bit rolly when the ferries race past, especially if you anchor where we did, right at the back of the anchorage, next to their channel.

After we arrived, we twisted Connor's arm for help with one last job: installing a UV water purifier drinking tap. Unusually, our fridge dumps its heat into our fresh-water tanks, rather than into sea water. This makes for simpler, longer lasting fridge plumbing, but at the expense of warmer fresh-water tanks that could grow things in them. It hasn't been an issue, but everyone we've mentioned this to has been concerned about growth so it seemed the prudent thing to do.

Time on the water: 9:42
Distance covered: 81.1nm
Avg speed: 8.4kts
Max speed: 11.7kts
Crew: John, Stefano, Clare, Robin, Connor

Navionics Track

Sainte-Anne

Stefano Rivera — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 01:00:00 GMT

We didn't make it round to Le Marin on our arrival into Martinique, we stopped half-way down the island, at Fort de France. The anchorage there is very central, in front of the fort, but also a little busy. Ferries constantly buzz back and forth, starting at 6am, and so do the church bells.

After running a couple of errands this morning, we planned to get down to Le Marin, so we could get someone to look at the engine's odd vibration.

Le Marin is the yachting capital of Martinique, a bay down in the South of the island, surrounded by mangroves, with more little bays off the sides that one can tie down for a hurricane, in. Aside from the many reefs, you can anchor just about anywhere in the bay.

The sail down to Le Marin started easily enough, motoring out into the channel and hauling up sails while waiting for a container ship to drop off its pilot and get out of the way. The motor sounded a lot better today, unless the problem reappears, I don't think we'll have anything for a mechanic to look at. Strong gusts were predicted, so we settled for the 2nd reef again, but used the full genoa, most of the day.

We hadn't seen too many fishing buoys on the north of Martinique, but as we went further South, and closer to the shore, they started to pop up everywhere.

The coast around Cap Salomon was gorgeous. Green mountains ending with sheer cliffs into the sea, some caves below. Every bay has a couple of masts in it. We got frequently becalmed in the shadow of the mountains and only made a few knots, close to the coast.

But once round Point du Diamant, we started to pick up some nice wind. It was coming almost directly from the corner of the bay we wanted to get to, so had to tack towards it.

This was some really nice sailing, the best we've had in weeks. Not too fast or rough, just nice easy, steady going, with enough wind and waves to make it fun.

To cap it off, a pod of dolphins came past, hunting fish around the boat. There was lots of jumping and frolicking in the bow wave. This is the first time we've had some dolphins along for the ride, been waiting to run into them.

The late start and all the tacking meant we weren't going to make it into Le Marin by sunset. We cut the tacking short, and motored directly upwind from the middle of the bay, but that still wasn't going to get us into Le Marin in good light. Given the bay is full of reefs, it's probably best not to enter it for the first time, at night.

So, we anchored outside the entrance, in front of the town of Sainte-Anne. This is another big anchorage, with 30+ yachts spread out on the flat shelf in front of the town. The water is crystal clear, and even in the twilight we could see the sandy bottom and feel comfortable that we're safely anchored.

Le Marin can wait for tomorrow morning. It's just round the corner.

Time on the water: 4:55
Distance covered: 29.6nm
Avg speed: 6kts
Max speed: 10.4kts

Navionics Track

To Martinique

Stefano Rivera — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

A big day. We planned to cross the channel to Dominica, pass it, cross to Martinique, and head most of the way down it to our anchorage in Point du Marin in the South of Martinique.

That would be 110nm, almost twice the length of yesterday's passage. The previous owners claimed the yacht could make 200nm / day passages, but that means maintaining a 8.3kts average over 24hrs, we've been averaging about 7kts (and not sailing 24hr/day).

Got up at 4am, to be able to get going around first light. Got the sails up on 2nd reef again (maybe wiser sailors would have used the 3rd reef), and headed down across the channel, past Iles des Saintes towards Dominica.

We used the staysail a little more than yesterday, it was great for the channels between islands where the wind pumped. The seas were big, and winds strong, but we got across in a couple of hours, and started down behind Dominica. It was shrouded in rain-clouds, but thankfully no fishing buoys. The glimpses we did get were beautiful, we'll have to come back. Lush forests, and not very built up.

The wind shadow wasn't too bad, we did have to motor-sail a bit, but got wind most of the way down. The cruising guide warned about strong gusts at Scott's Head on the Southern end of the Island. The warnings were absolutely correct, went from being almost totally becalmed to wanting to reef our staysail a bit, because we were being overpowered by the wind.

Crossing the Martinique Channel to Martinique was a fairly brutal 3hr upwind pounding, into wind and big waves. We made about 7kts, but it was a struggle. The decks were constantly awash, and we had many waves breaking over the entire length of the boat. The dorades (air vents that don't let water in, pioneered by Dorade) were overwhelmed by some of these waves, and my bed got a good salt-water sprinkling. 3rd reef probably would have been better, but it was too late to take it in, and we seemed to be doing OK, so we stuck with it.

Our quarantine flag was still up from the night before, and the winds on the crossings shredded the edge of it. Not really made to be flown under way...

Finally, we got behind the shelter of Martinique's volcano, Mount Pelée. First a more leisurely sail, and then becalmed by the rest of the island's wind-shade. Motored-sailed down through this, but the motor started getting quite a bit of vibration to it, something wobbling on the drive-shaft, by the feel of it. John had a peek down under the stern, to see if we'd caught a fishing buoy line, but it looked clean. We'll have to have a proper look, and maybe get a mechanic out, in Martinique.

It was becoming obvious that we couldn't get down to Point du Marin, by sun-down, so we re-routed to Fort de France, half-way down the island. Got a nice bit of wind as we came up to it, a good last sail of the day.

With 97nm track miles for the day, it was tempting to sail a few more tacks to cross the 100 mark, but we were tired and wanted to get anchored while there was still good light. 100nm can wait for another day.

Anchored in front of the Fort, and got a swim in before the sun went down.

Martinique is very built-up, compared to the islands we've been on. It's quite a culture-shock after a week on Barbuda. But, very relieved to be able to take a day off, after some hard days sailing.

Time on the water: 13:20
Distance covered: 97.6nm
Avg speed: 7.1kts
Max speed: 11.4kts

Navionics Track