Carriacou Photos

Off they go!  Boat built on Carriacou

American Eagle - launched while we were there.

Bow under construction

Amidship

Keel

The Boatyard

One being built

Left standing on the beach!

Attaching the Rudder

Windward Islands - Carriacou

        On the sail down to Carriacou (an island of Grenada), we caught a double strike of mahi!!  I reeled em both in - Jason would have been proud of his fishing buddy!  They weren't huge but about three meals and Roxy sure loves fresh fish. lol

        Darrell has a good analogy regarding our travel days. Imagine driving your home at 5 miles per hour from Lubbock to Amarillo without stopping. Travel time is 24-25 hours for a trip that length. You see the lights of the towns off in the distance as you sail along under the stars. We have had several such passages over the course of the trip. We actually enjoy sailing at night. The best part is how quiet it has been without having to motor into the wind!

        Since being here, we have been diving once - yes, we needed a refresher. Ann's gear is now badly in need of servicing from dry rot!!  The dive was BEAUTIFUL !!!  The reef was healthy and full of many varieties of fish. I remember why I fell in love with diving, now!

        While we have been in the windwards, an offer was made on our house in Key Largo. If all goes well, we will close the end of August. Look out, KL, here we come!  We have a lot of stuff to get rid of or store!

        We are looking forward to a sailing regatta here in a little over a week. These people build sailing vessels from scratch on a beach!  Outta be interesting!

        And interesting it was to see the boats being built!  (I thought about you, Capt. Al)  We took two buses over to Windward. Hope we captured the true nature of it. There is not really a boatyard - there are boats and they are in a yard - a backyard!  The American Eagle was launched last Sunday. When they launch one, they throw a big party and the whole island gets invited with food and drink for the occasion. 

        The extra curricular activities surrounding the Regatta are getting going early. The cruisers have a pot luck dinner and an auction to raise $$ for the children' s educational funds next week. 

        We sailed over to Grenada for the weekend to look things over.  While we have been here, we have gotten a contract to sell our house in Key Largo.  We are looking at places to store the boat while we fly back to get the closing and finish moving things out.  We have some great friends who have offered to dog sit for Roxy while we are gone - they don't know what they are getting in to!  

Windward Pictures

Islands - probably Carriacou

Double Strike - dolphin!!

Martinique pictures

The coffins in St. Pierre

Martinique Naval ship on Bastille Day

Fort de France, Martinique

Celtic Rover in Fort de France, Martinique

More Pictures

Harbor View St. Pierre

Volcano Ruins

St. Pierre

A street in St. Pierre

Windward Islands – Martinique

            What a great sail to get here!  We are starting to be able to “ease our sheets”!!!!  That means that we are no longer sailing upwind.  This equates to easier, more comfortable and faster speeds – lovely!  We arrived at St. Pierre after about 14 hours – about 1½ hours after sunset.  Anchoring in the dark can be tricky but we handled it fine.  Today is Friday 13 – unlucky – NOT!  Tomorrow is Bastille Day in the French Islands – will be interesting. 

            St. Pierre was a great town!  We would have stayed but there is a tropical wave coming and the anchorage was very unprotected.  The town was wiped out by Mt. Pelée  in 1902 – a volcano.  Some pictures to show you.  An interesting site that I haven’t seen before was coffins in a store front on a main street – next door was handmade furniture (same carpenter???).  We sampled French pastries for breakfast while we were checking in with customs.  There was a bicycle race going on on Martinique – seemed like a very big deal. 

            Then we sained to Anse Mitan.  Beautiful anchorage near the capitol of Fort de France.  The onshore characters made us feel like we were in the middle of a large US city – “seedy” is a nice way of putting it.  So we crossed the bay to jointhe other boats at the city anchorage just under Ft. Saint Louis – better.  And close to many conven iences – that were closed for Bastille Day!!  Couple of days here then a weather window opened.

            Next stop………Grenada.  For those of you following us on a map, yes there are several islands that we have been skipping.  The regulations to  import  a pet can be quite unmanageable.

Guadeluope - Iles de Saintes

St. Pierre - view of volcano destruction

More volcano destruction

Leeward Islands - Guadeloupe

Dave & Linda from Wayward Wind

Scott, Kim & Ann - Cooling off!

Waterfall

Darrell & Roxy swimming.

Roxy eating mangoes.

        We arrived in Deshaies a little after noon on Saturday. It was about a 28 hour sail from St. Martin. Mostly good - the last hour seemed to drag!  No fish to brag about on this crossing. 

        Once again we are in a French speaking country. We did buy a book that is called "French for Cruisers" and it has a lot of great information. Now, if I could recall more of the French that I learned in high school we would be golden. All those years ago and not using the language does not make one very fluent in a language. 

        On Sunday morning as we were preparing to go for a hike, the Coast Guard came by and inspected the boat and our papers. This hasn't happened very many times to us (although a routine for every boat in the DR).  I was nervous that they might notice our Certificate of Documentation was out of date!  No problem, officer, we have renewed it but it is at our house in Key Largo. Anyway, they didn't catch it and we have our good friend, Jim Fagan, who went and found it for us. He will be mailing it to us when we give him a destination to send it to. 

        We went for that hike up a river here. Hope you enjoy pictures. They have been pretty scarce because I was not going to take my phone (only camera) to a lot of places. We bought a new waterproof camera in Phillipsburg, Sint Maarten. Now you can enjoy some more of the scenery!

Roxy sure enjoyed that hike up the river!  There were several deep pools where the water collected that she went swimming and fishing in.  She loved it!!!  We found some fresh mangoes - she even ate some.

On Tuesday, we moved south along the coast of Guadeloupe to Iles a Saintes.  Some beautiful, small islands.  It most of the day to get there and I must say that our "comfort zone" has been extended to include sailing in some 30 knot winds.  Not something we are going to go and do all the time but when you got em, you deal with em!

Now, we are going to move on to the Windward islands.  Next stop Martinique.

Leeward Islands - St. Martin/Sint Maarten

New Propane valve on left!

        St. Martin/Sint Maarten is beautiful!!!  So glad we decided to make the trip. We had a lovely 28 hour sail to get here and we arrived 1/2 hour after Celtic Rover!  There are three other boats we have been traveling with since many countries ago, plus one more new one (Bella Blue). About the last ten miles before we got here, we caught a nice Mahi. Since we didn't have enough freezer space, we had a big feast and invited six other cruisers over. It was a blast!!

        The dog was not even an issue here so we sailed right by BVI's. We are still considering having a rabies titer done so we can get her clearance for several more islands that we might have to skip for now but can always come back to. 

        It's always something!  As we were checking in, I noticed that our Coast Guard paperwork was going to expire on June 30!!  No problem, we have renewed it - we just have to determine which stack of mail it is in and get it sent to us!  While we have been gone, we have changed our mailing address and it is either on the desk at our house or in Green Cove Springs at our mail handling service. 

        Darrell had been widening his horizons both culturally and in the cuisines. He had bruschetta the other day and loved it!  We also went to a fund raiser called the Taste of Sint Maarten which we enjoyed immensely.  On the way back to the boat he found cigarettes $16 for two (yes two) cartons - if the prices keep going down, I will never get him to quit!!!

        We were FINALLY able to replace a propane valve on our tank!  These tanks just barely fit into the locker that is made for them so we have been looking for a new valve since we ran completely out of propane back in Culebra!  When Darrell got it replaced, he said the company had a bucketful of old valves.  We haven't found anyone willing to get one and put it on our tank in about six weeks of trying!  Whew, now I know there will be coffee every morning!  But hey, it's de islands, mon!  I was so happy I took a picture of it with our new camera.  

        Next weather window appears to be this weekend. We will skip St. Barts along with several orher islands and go to Guadeloupe.  We need to get further south before hurricane season progresses much more.