Indian River boat trip, Dominica

New Passages Arriving in St Pierre, Martinique

Coulirou took this video of us arriving with them in Martinique. It was just by chance that we both were arriving at the same time...we didn't know they would be there. Notice Emily waving to the camera!

Martinique photos

We've just uploaded some photos of Martinique...check them out!

More photos from St Lucia

We've added Emily's friend Jenny's photos from St Lucia onto our photo album...check it out!

Martinique

So after a great week hanging out with Jenny and Clay and covering most of St Lucia by car and boat, and after pulling into possibly the prettiest harbor of our trip so far (Marigot Bay), we had a family meeting and decided it was time to start moving north before the hurricanes hit. So we sailed from Soufriere where our boat was surrounded by bats the night before, up to Rodney Bay to reprovision.

On Monday, we set sail for Martinique. We had a pretty uneventful sail, though waves were a little rough with wind too light to really push us through them, even with all our sails up. As we got closer to Martinique, the waves died down and out of nowhere, a dolphin surfaced about 50 ft from the cockpit. He was a much darker color and much bigger than we expected. He was alone and acted more like a whale - taking a deep breath and then diving down. He did not stay at the surface. After about 10 minutes he surfaced one more time, but this time about 5 ft from us, took a deep, noisy breath, and was gone for good.

Just about that time the weather I'd been keeping an eye on approaching from the east was looking a pretty bad and squally. Since the wind was coming at this point directly from our destination of Marin, we turned on the motor and motor sailed towards our waypoint with just the main up. As the squall hit though, we had to double reef the main, close-in the cockpit, and tie ourselves into the cockpit with our harnesses. Waves increased, we lost sight of land, and had 30 - 35 kt winds for about 15 minutes...rather long for a squall. But as it cleared, we were pulling into a gorgeous day in Martinique. We anchored and immediately went onto shore to celebrate our passage and our dolphin siting with a couple cold local beers called Biere Lorraine (which turns out to be my new favorite beer) at a cafe which made us feel like we were in France.

Marin became a little crowded for us though, and we left Wednesday to move 2 miles out to the cute town of St Anne where there are much fewer boats and possibly the best bakery for baguettes that we've found. We're happy here for a few days and we'll be able to meet up with our French friends. Emanuelle is coming back from a trip home to France today, and Oliver is already here, but anchored in Marin. We'll catch up with them tomorrow most likely, but today is just a beach and hiking day for us. Speaking of which - I'm going to get going to the beach now. More photos will be coming up once we have a better internet connection. Ciao!