July 21. Anse Mitan, Martinique

We left the marina as planned and when we started motor sailing along the lee of St. Kitts instead of calm seas we encountered a swell against us making us do the Caribbean two step all over again, two forward one back. Knowing that the wind would die down later on the day and even change direction from 110 to 90 we went the 2 miles to Ballast Bay and anchored. We enjoyed lunch, awed at the beautiful scenery and Sid watched two Barracudas swim under the boat. One was really huge and then we heard this splash and saw the back of the big barracuda cutting through the water like a rocket and the little one chasing behind him. He would get back under the boat, but a few minutes later again would make a wild dash away from the boat with the little guy in hot pursuit. That's when we noticed again that his whole back was out of the water, he was not doing well and the little one knew that and saw dinner. We decided that this was not a good idea to go swimming at this time. It was quite interesting to watch the ordeal. After relaxing till the afternoon we noticed the seas had settled as per the prediction so pulled the anchor and continued our adventure south. This time motor sailing along the lee shore was calm but as soon as we came to the end of the island the water turned into a washing machine (they call it a katarac sea, it's current against swell and wind = nasty, nasty). This lasted about 2 miles and not just that I noticed some fishing buoys and when we checked on the chart on the depths we noticed that we were on a shelf. Since we didn't want to run over a trap again, we immediately changed direction due west, pulled all our sails out, turned the engine off and sailed a couple of miles and off the shelf into deep water where its normally too deep to place traps. From there it was smooth sailing for a long while. Wind was 12 to 15 Knots and swells 4 to occasional 5 feet, a pleasant motor sail. We past the island of Nevis which was definitely prettier than St. Kitts and a bit more tropical looking. The next island was Montserrat, where the Soufriere Hills Volcano is very, very active at this point. He first erupted in 1995, destroying the capital Plymouth. Two years ago scientists expected that the volcano would quiet down. However, the volcano just won't go away. Last May another major eruption showed that the mountain is still very alive and unsafe. There is both land and a maritime exclusion zone and extends 2 miles from shore around the southern half of the island. In times of bad eruptions and dome collapses the flow of hot ash has been seen to travel in a volcanic cloud at least a mile and half out to sea. The hot ash could burn wholes into sails making them look like Swiss cheese. The best to avoid the effect of the volcano is to sail around the east side of the island. By that time the wind and sea conditioned had worsened a bit and in order to sail around Montserrat due east would have been a long 8 to 10 hour pounding, Caribbean two step trip as we would have to sail into the weather. Too long of a trip to be miserable and decided to take the chance and sail around Montserrat on the western side. Our thought for taking this chance was, if it was our time to check out yet, might as well go out with a big glow, but if time was not yet here Montserrat will behave and he did, although he did let us know that he was there by the punched odor of sulfur and the gritty feel of dust and we were 7 miles west of the island. We were not alone, three other boats were out here taking the chance. There were several more islands (Guadaloupe, The Saintes and Dominica)we sailed by and every time just before we got into the lee of the island we could feel the Katarac effect again for a couple of miles. Sloppy but doable. All in all it was pretty comfy and the boat wanted to sail with 6 knots badly but every time she did that we had buckets of water spray over the boat, half way up the sails, into the cockpit and over the dodger and bimini and of course all over us, so we had to slow down and slow down again by a half knot and you wouldn't believe the difference in comfort by just a half knot of speed. Since we departed from Ballast Bay a bit later our estimated arrival time in St. Lucia would have been around 5 pm. Not just that the next tropical wave was underway and we did not want to get into it, so we decided to make it as far as Martinique. We arrived at the north end just around midnight and since St. Pierre is a very easy anchorage to arrive in the middle of the night we parked the boat there, got a deserved 3 hour sleep, alarm was set for 6.30 and after we indulged in Sid's super morning coffee we headed the rest to Port de France. Saint Pierre was worth the stop and is definitely on our plan next season when heading up into the Caribbean islands to explore, it was the most breathtaking view to see the French looking houses along the beach, with lush hills in the background and in the near distance the towering Mont Pelee Volcano, which erupted and destroyed the whole village including all inhabitants in 1902. Many ruins still remain. Post-disaster buildings have been built onto old structures, so many new buildings share at least one wall with the past. Just outside of the anchorage a school of juvenile dolphins surrounded Paradise. They were a happy bunch as they fully jumped out of the water, while some waved their tails, while others played tag with the bow. At one point 15 dolphins surfaced next to each other in front of the boat, looked almost like a ballet, it was beautiful.
In Chris Doyle's boating guide of the Wayward Islands he wrote that the customs office in Port the France closes at 12.30, he also wrote that the chandlery in town will check boats out and may be able to check them in in the near future. I jumped ship right away to catch the fairy across into town to check in before they close the office, but headed first to the chandlery. Indeed can we check in there now as the customs office moved some 10 miles out of town. Not just that boaters can check in and out at the Internet Cafe and in Pointe du Bount, where we are. It was easy, just had to fill out a form with our info and there was no fees attached either. Then of course I went exploring the city. I found a great supermarket right around the corner from the chandlery and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. The store is filled with European goodies I haven't seen in years and the wine prices are the best I've ever seen anywhere. You can buy good French wines from E$ 2.80 and up. Rum is pretty cheep too and they had a better goat cheese variety than we have in Switzerland and sausages and salamis, just the best of the best. I will have such a great time to provision here. We also found out that there are a lot of rum distilleries on the island and since we're going to be stuck in yet another tropical wave, actually two, we're going to rent a car and go rum tasting, sound fun doesn't it.
On another note, we think that Tika is thinking about shooting us soon. It's not been easy on her at all with all the pounding into the weather ever since we left the Dominican Republic. One of the main problems for her is not being able to use her litter box in the bathroom. We found pee on the floor next to the box, then one time she peed on the bed. Along Vieques, I guess she had to go really bad, she walked right by us, hopped up on deck, placed herself in front of the dodger where she was in full view of us. We wondered why the heck she would go up there in this chop until she hunched down and rolled a couple of fresh turds down the icing glass. That gave us a clue how difficult it really was for her. From then on we had an extra litter box in the cockpit, which she started using too, with our help holding on to the pan. On our trip here, she stepped into the litter box and was balanced a bit oddly on the rim, we couldn't get to her on time and the box tipped over and interrupted her business. But only for just a couple of seconds as she threw us a dirty look and then pooped right in the middle of the companion way. We had to tell her too what a good kitty she was, poor little thing. Sid just told me to add that Manuela tried to catch each single turd as it came out. Tika might have been embarrassed but she sure had a smile on her face.
Oh by the way Welsh Rover arrived in St. Kitts and is weathering the next few tropical waves there.