Some Pictures from the trip back up the island chain

A lesson in line splicing - that took all day!

Darrell blowing the conch

St. Anne Anchorage

Sunset St. Pierre

Mr. Pelee - the volcano

Phillipsburg, St.Maarten to St. Croix

    We came back to Phillipsburg to shop and have lunch. Last time the local tavern was out of curry goat and I really wanted to try it!  THIS time - I ordered it (delicious)!!  The proprietress even remembered us!!! We are living a life Mike would enjoy - every trip a field trip, every meal a banquet! To get here, we take a local bus. Last time, there had been an earthquake here and the whole bus was buzzing about how strong the tremor had been. This is very much a tourist stop - more than some of the islands we visit. 
    We waited out some strong winds to depart St. Martin. We left on Monday about noon. We parted company of Wayward Wind - ;.(.  They fly back to the US for the holidays next week. I am guaranteed to see them up island, though. We are making a new genoa cover and a new helm cover while they are gone and while we are waiting on the visit from Jessica, Craig, and Lyric. 
    A pleasant overnight sail of 19 hours - 100 miles. Much of it with our gennaker and going seven knots downwind.  We anchored Tuesday morning and low and behold, we are almost IN the airport runway. Yes, St. Croix uses seaplanes for air service. Interesting to watch and a busy place!  Weather dictated a short stay in St. Croix. 
    We left Thursday for Culebra. Had a wonderful beam reach for 9 hours to get here!  I think Christmas in Culebra sounds great - we were considering Christmas Cove but the northerly swells didn't sound great for that location.  We are here with Celtic Rover and hope to see Azaya, Kolibrie, and Plane to Sea while we are here. Also have some boat projects to tend to. 
    Happy Holidays to ALL!
    

Moving UP the island chain!

Guadeloupe

            Iles Des Saintes was the first stop in Guadeloupe.  We only stayed there for two nights before moving on.  Beautiful place!  Next, we traveled up the coast to a place called Pigeon Island – city named Malendur.  Just one mile off the coast is a waterpark named after Jacques Cousteau – SPLENDID!!  Gorgeous water, plentiful fish life, and warm.  Good thing it was protected waters, because there were some yellow tails that were big!! 

            After being joined by our friends for some snorkeling and and nice anniversary dinner in Malendur, we moved up to Deshaies – on the northwest corner.  Weather dictates that we move on or be here for at least another week.  So we checked out and left early on December 7.

St. Martin

            Just about 24 hours later, we anchored in Simpson Bay to wait for daylight and the lift bridge to open so we could enter Simpson Bay Lagoon.  A day to recuperate from the crossing and we are going strong again.   We are enjoying the tuna we caught on the crossing.  We shared with Celtic Rover – the ½ tuna we caught.  Yes, we had a double strike and by the time we reeled the second one in, he was only the front half.  Nice, fresh tuna that we ALL enjoy (including Roxy). 

            Bruce helped us with a tune up on the carburetor of the dinghy motor and we are back in business with being more mobile again.  Roxy appreciates being able to travel to shore more regularly – as we all do.  Literally, anything you need for a boat is here in St. Martin.  We are here in the protected lagoon to wait out the winds that have increased significantly in velocity.  It is a lot different here than when we were here in June or July – many more boats and some big mega yachts! 

            As soon as the weather allows (maybe Monday the 17^th), we are going to move again toward the USVI.  We are trying to make Culebra for Christmas.  Next stop, our phones will work once more!!!! :D 

Some pictures

Ann Snorkeling

And taking pictures

Alibi on the move Again

St. George's Harbor - Windjammer Mandalay at anchor

Cutty, our Island tour guide

Ann & Darrell at the waterfall

Who has a monkey on her back!?!?

Didn't know bamboo was so strong

Nutmeg, one of the spices of the spice Island

Rum Distillery

Wow, that's powerful stuff!

Carriacou was the first stop.  A very nice day sail of about 8 hours!  It was good not to be going far because we had some kinks to work out after sitting in one place for over three months.  This is a lovely place!!  We came REAL close to seeing some friends who have their boat in Key Largo.  They had stopped there on a Windjammer sail – sorry we missed you, Marty and Louise!

            We were at Sandy Island, just off Hillsborough, Carriacou.  While there, we enjoyed some great snorkeling.  Darrell was the party planner when he invited the whole anchorage to a beach party.  We roasted hot dogs, chicken, kielbasa, fish and had all the trimmings.  We even had a musician.  What a fun time!!  The next night, we had an evening get-together with some other boats we met in Grenada (Darrell’s friends from Volleyball). 

            The next stop was Petite Martinique for rest and cheap beer.  It is the first place I have ever seen where your cases of beer are delivered by tractor bucket to the dock!  When we left there, we were gone for one hour and our main halyard broke (IN the eye splice)!

            SOOOO, once again, Darrell was up the mast!  This was one of many trips since we replaced the coaxial antenna wire for our VHF radio while we were in Grenada.  Our logbook reads:  Up the mast, down in the bilge, up the mast, down in the bilge, up the mast, …….hahaha!  At least the halyard didn’t break with him on it!!!!  Weather finally cooperated and we were able to leave there – after Miss Roxy got us kicked off a beach!

            Twenty-four hours later, we landed at Martinique again.  Le Marin is a very protected anchorage with LOTS of sailboats!  A few days there was enough (Thanksgiving included) so we moved to St. Anne (Great name).  We love the town and anchorage.  Much less crowded and pretty water.  While we were in Le Marin, we took Roxy to the vet for her annual shots – she got a pet passport and it’s in French!

            These French islands are challenging me to rapidly improve my French!  We so enjoy the culture.  Baguettes are quite nice!  We tried something here called accras – kinda like fritters. 

            We are waiting on our friends and buddy boats – Wayward Wind (Dave & Linda) and Celtic Rover (Bruce & Jan).  They are enjoying the Grenadines  -  a stop we had to miss because of the dog.  We really enjoy travelling in their company!

            We spent a few days in St. Pierre on the north west coast of Martinique with the above boats.  They will never trust Darrell to plan any shore excursions again!  WE all decided we wanted to see Mount Pelée up close – more history in a bit.  So we boarded the bus.  We departed the bus and began a hike up toward the mountain – a LONG hike.  We were a few kilometers from the summit when we all decided we had had enough uphill climbing.  So we returned to the bus stop.  After several minutes (about 40), we decided to start walking in the direction of St. Pierre and catch the bus as it came by.  MANY minutes into the trip, we had not seen any busses.  We kept walking (at least it was downhill).  Finally one of our group had had enough exercise – he decided to go call a taxi at a local house.  A few minutes later, we were all loading into a man’s van and being taken the rest of the way down the mountain.  It seems that the busses don’t run in the afternoon – lol!  We tallied the distances and think we probably walked about 15-18 kilometers – YOU do the math! 

            We left there on Friday night for a 15-16 hour sail to Iles Des Saintes (Guadeloupe).  A nice night sail with the full moon BUT we had a few squalls to contend with.  One on each end of the island Dominica.  We were pretty tired after the overnight sail so we rested most of yesterday.  Today, Darrell has been fixing some things on Wayward Wind and Roxy and I have been taking care of business.  We enjoyed a brief SKYPE session with Jessica, Craig, and Lyric at lunchtime.  They are coming to Puerto Rico in January – reason we are making tracks north to meet them! 

            Anyway for the history of St. Pierre:  It was the hub of the islands at the turn of the century with a population of 33,000 and considered the Paris of the Caribbean.  In 1902, the volcano erupted and killed the entire city but one man who was in a prison cell and one man on a boat.  Several boats in the harbor were also sunk.  The gaseous blast froze folks in their tracks.  Many had been encouraged not to leave for multiple political reasons – sad.  Now, only about 3,000 people reside there and the volcano is expected to erupt again sometime in the next 100 years.  I would have to think twice about staying there!