Cutting some lines- Bequia to Mustique

Roger here! This is me getting into our dinghy at Jack's Restaurant's dinghy dock in Bequia.


Yesterday I cut a line on the way out of Bequia and almost cut another after mooring in Mustique. On the way out it was the anchor's snubber line. We had a nice hook spliced into one end of the line to clip onto the anchor chain but one of its two forks (to the right in this photo) got bent back and the hook was useless.


So for the past few months I have been tying the other end of the line to the anchor chain with a series of hitches. The knot has never failed, but it sometimes gets quite tight needing the use of the marlin spike to loosen the knot. In Bequia, after about five days on the same anchor, mostly in 20 knot winds, it was so tight that I had to cut the knot and then re-whipped the end.

The sail was a short one, only about ten miles, and we used double reefed main and small jib, sacrificing speed for stability. The first course was near a run, without head sail, from the town out of Admiralty Bay to the westernmost outcropping off the west tip of Bequia Island. We jibed and headed south, through the passage between Pigeon Island and Quatre Island, which was plenty wide. Then it was 150 magnetic to Britannia Bay, the harbor of Mustique. This harbor is wide open to the west guarded only by a sunken reef that would not block waves from the west, but will tear your keel off if you don't watch out for it.

With houses renting for $40K US per week and the hotel at $700 US per night, minimum, we boaters are the budget conscious visitors. But to maintain an aura of exclusivity, the moorings here are 25 US per night (and they charge you the same for anchoring if the moorings are all taken) with a three night minimum.

Once on the mooring, it was time to lower the dinghy but the lines at the top block got snared, one under the other, and it was a no go, and there is a lot of weight on the line. I tried the marlin spike but again a no go. Cutting the line was ill advised because the dinghy weighs a lot and would fall suddenly, about 8 feet, onto the transom of the boat and then into the water. So I hooked a snatch block into the hoop to which the snarled block was attached, ran a line from the dinghy pickup point to the snatch block and then to the primary port winch. By taking the strain on this line we got the strain off the snarled davit block, lowered the dinghy gradually into the water and then reran the dinghy davit line through its blocks, as shown below.

Another problem solved.

Yesterday was so different from today. Yesterday, the day just described, was filled with boat tasks (including the sailing from 11:20 AM until 2 PM) from 6:30 am to 5:00 pm with short breaks for breakfast and lunch. Last night we had planned to attend the jump up at Basil's, the famous waterfront bar, restaurant and boutique, of which the next photo shows a couple of its banners, waving in the breeze.


This was to cost $60 per person and was "all you can eat" with live music (which we heard on our boat until 1 am.) We had made reservations but cancelled them when we considered how bad for our health the "all you can eat" mentality is. We enjoyed a delicious home cooked pesto, salami and mozzarella pizza with salad instead.

I worked last night on my affidavit for an admiralty case in which I am the defendant along with ILENE, the boat. This is the claim by the towboat company that pulled us off the rocks in Rhode Island last August. My former insurance company is paying for my attorney and will pay the settlement, so I have no exposure. But it kept me awake last night thinking of the various ways in which the plaintiff had misrepresented the facts to puff up their claim and make me look like an idiot. They even cited an early posting of this blog as an alleged admission and falsely claimed that I had tried to destroy evidence by withdrawing that posting, which we had not done! So last night I drafted my affidavit which I sent to my attorney today.

And today was the just the opposite. I did no boat work at all: I just laid around in the boat, reading and ate the delicious food that Lene prepared for breakfast and for lunch.

Mustique

Well, Mustique is certainly different from the other islands we've been on. It is a privately owned island - The Mustique Corporation runs it (although still part of the nation of St. Vincent & the Grenadines...don't really understand the politics of it all). It has about 90 homes on it, each one more elaborate and beautiful than the next.

The sail here from Bequia was about 3 hours because we put up very little sail and went slow. We've decided to stay about 3 days before we keep going south to other Grenadines.

We learned that about half of the homes are rented when the owners aren't in residence. Each home has its own racing green Kawasaki Mule with the corporate logo on it that comes with the rental. And natives abound here, all to do the service of the wealthy owners/renters. We've spoken to several of the people who work here (one cannot live on Mustique unless you own/rent, stay in a hotel, live on a boat or have a job here!) and the workers all claim to be on call 24/7. If a toilet isn't working at 4 AM in one of the homes and its your job to fix it, the home owner/renter does not wait until morning...not when they're paying $40,000 a week...not an exorbitant amount here, we've also learned. There are a couple of hotels as well. One is The Cotton House ($700 per day minimum) and the other is called Firefly.

Here are some photos:
The Library -- where this posting was done

A few of the houses in their secluded settings:
The oldest tree on the island (or what is left of it) in front of the interdenominational Bamboo Church with no doors to the right.
Faux Victorian overpriced stores on the two block long "Town".
The "Fishing Village" with Basils Bar and Restarant in the background. We sat at the extreme right, in the corner, over the water. Great location, Bach and Borodin on the stereo, very attentive trained service, high prices(but that's par for the course here) but not so good food.

In Bequia

Having arrived in Bequia on Thursday of last week, this stop is one of our longest stays in any port.... five days now. One look above at Admiralty Bay, where we spent the first night on a mooring and since then on anchor, might explain the attraction. Rona took us on a tour of this island with her favorite taxi driver, Lency. Here he is with his cab; passengers sit in the back.

This included a stop at a large bay on the south side of the island in which boats can anchor. When we saw them rocking from 20 degrees on one side to 20 on the other we concluded that this anchorage was too "rolly" for us.

We also stopped at a place where they are trying to save sea turtles.

Their mom's lay the eggs in sand nests on the beach and if and when the eggs hatch, the babies crawl into the sea. There are many animal predators who like the taste of turtle eggs, and others in the water who like the taste of baby turtles. So only one in a thousand eggs grow into adult turtles. At this rescue place they put rubber tires around the nests to stave off the birds and go back when the hatching is taking place and bring the babies to their tanks where they grow for 4 -5 years before being released into the sea. They claim that about 35 percent of the turtles they save are placed back into the sea.

We visited Fort Hamilton, a small fort atop a hill guarding the Bay.

We did a bit of shopping for clothing and food before bidding Rona good by when she took the ferry back to St. Vincent. Rona took the ferry back to Bequia (45 minutes each way) but returned to spend time with us on two other days and we had lunch together at Jack's, a lovely seaside restaurant in Princess Margaret Bay not far from where we are anchored.
Below is Princess Margaret Beach...sometimes called, if you're not confused enough already, Tony Gibbons Beach. The view is from Jack's Restaurant.


Here is ILENE with a neighbor! Zoom camera makes them appear closer than they really are.

Our anchor is in 25 feet of water. Its amazing that you can see the bottom. We are anchored off the point of Princess Margaret Bay, one of the several bays within Admiralty Bay.

We have dined aboard the last few nights, and swam from the boat. Roger took a scraper and cleared barnacles from the propeller and inspected to insure that the sacrificial zincs are still in place, to be eaten by the sea water so that it does not eat the propeller.

We checked out the bookstore and two shops that make and sell the most exquisite model boats. Lene got a haircut. We came ashore and spent a few hours on the Internet and Skype and with this blog and the last posting.

We made friends with a British couple, Bob and Sue, a few ports ago and again here. They are sailing a Scandinavian boat, a Naiad. Having arrived here from England, they plan on crossing the Pacific and spending about 2 more years sailing before returning home to their 500 year old home outside of London. We invited them for breakfast aboard of mango pancakes and turkey bacon. They brought us the most delicious jar of blueberry and black currant jam.

We also met up with Tom (T.L.) and Harriet Linsky, aboard their Brazilian built catamaran, Hands Across The Sea.


We had heard of them and their 501(c)(3) foundation by the same name from the Caribbean 1500 and had contacted them then but had forgotten about it until we saw their boat. Their mission is improving literacy in the islands of the Eastern Caribbean by giving books to schools. We can volunteer in Grenada with tasks such as reading aloud to young children or painting rooms to be converted to libraries within the school. Even more importantly, we can be used back home to go to book sales conducted by Friends of the Library organizations to buy used children's books with our donated money or money donated to them by others. They pick up and box the books and have persuaded a shipping company to ship them down here for free or almost free. They have shipped many thousands of books to many schools on many of the islands here in the first two or three years of operations. We hope to make ourselves useful in some way. It was fun to hear about T.L.'s experience as an Olympic sailor in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. (I wish Roger felt more warmly toward catamarans. They seem to be SO much more comfortable and spacious than a monohull. But, what can I do?)


We plan on leaving Bequia tomorrow and sail to Mustique. We'll probably be there for about 3 nights and then move on to other islands in the Grenadines.

St. Vincent

The passage from St. Lucia to Grenada was a long one by our recent lazy standards. We left our mooring at Soufriere at 6:40 am and arrived at a mooring field in a small passage between the mainland of St. Vincent and Young Island, at about 3 pm. Our mooring field, and the next one, nearby, at which several yacht charter companies base their fleets, are the main yacht havens of St. Vincent. Young Island is just past the capitol city, Kingstown, and is a resort.

Our trip was enlivened by a small pod of porpoises (dolphins?) who stayed long enough for us to get the camera and get it rolling. The video of it is at the end of this post. Watch carefully the beginning of the video and you can see the splashes of the dolphins.

We were met by our friends, Rona and Tabou. Rona became our chauffeur, and Tabou our cook, in addition to their providing laundry service, charging our electric devices, and they let us use their internet and take showers. In other words: full service hosts.

Here is their 10 week old kitty, Nutmeg, called Nutty.


Our first call of business upon arriving on every island is checking into customs, just as the last item of business is checking out. It was at the point when we readied our paperwork for a trip to St. Vincent customs that we realized we had made a very big error. Do you recall our hoisting the dink aboard at Soufriere, late in our last posting, in anticipation of a long sail the next day? Well we completely forgot about checking OUT at St. Lucia customs. We learned that this cannot be done by email or fax and that before the end of our 24 hour grace period in St. Vincent, we faced the need to sail back to St. Lucia, pay the fine that awaits us there, and then sail back to St. Vincent the next day. We are still stateside sailors; we do not think of checking in or out of customs when leaving any US port before heading for another, even one in a different state. Luckily, it worked out so we were able to enter St Vincent and do not have to pay our fine to St. Lucia until we return there, though perhaps a written offer to pay in advance, by mail, will further show our good faith in this matter.

We ate at several restaurants at the water's edge but our best food was Tabou's home cooked chicken, one night and mahi-mahi the next, with tasty accompanying vegetables and rice dishes. Rona introduced us to Tabou's Dad, his Mom and various friends, including Bren and her husband, who returned to St. Vincent after bearing and raising their three adult kids in London and who fed us and introduced us to ginger syrup, which, mixed with water and ice, makes a delicious refreshing drink.

Another day, we drove around the coast of the southern half of the island, to above the new airport under construction on the windward coast with big breakers on its rocky shores and then, retracing our path back, up the leeward shore to Wallilabou Bay. Wallilabou is yet another Pirates of the Caribbean site, but is devoted to a museum of the movie and is a nice lunch spot. Lunch was after a swim. They moor boats here, or anchor them, with the locals taking aft lines to shore or to pilings of a former dock. The only problem with this was that the boats were too close to each other and were in danger of touching. Roger saw several fending each other off while he was swimming and swam over and advised them to tie their dinghys amidships to serve as large fenders.

St Vincent has one major road that runs around the edge of the island, except on its northeastern third. This road in several spots is only two narrow lanes wide, just enough room for cars or trucks to pass each other in opposite directions. There are several parallel streets in Kingstown, and several alleys off the main road where people live in the urban center, but one narrow road for the rest of the island and no roads at all in the northeast or the interior.

One lucky "break" occurred on the morning of our third day: we "broke" off our mooring. We used one of our dock lines, running it from one bow cleat and chock, through the eye of the mooring bridle and then to the chock and cleat on the other bow. We have been doing this all along. Well, the line chafed through where it came in contact with the bridle and we were drifting away. Lucky? Yes; because this occurred when we were planning to leave for a day's excursion rather than either at night, when we would have been sleeping, or after we had left the boat for the day's adventure. Roger noticed, yelled to Lene who started the engine and called our mooring provider and we were back on the same mooring, but with two lines, one tighter than the other, within 15 minutes. If the tighter one chafes through, the other one will hold the strain.

After three nights on St. Vincent, we passaged from St. Vincent to our first Grenadine, Bequia (pronounced Beck way), which is more of a yachtie place than St. Vincent itself. The trip was about 90 minutes, line of sight, with full main and no head sail, in winds that were around 15 but gusted to 22 knots from off our port beam on a course of 210 magnetic. Rona was our guest. We connected with the Bound family with who we met in Iles des Saintes and Dominica, and will attend a Jump Up (steel band party) and barbecue at Frangipani, a beach bar and restaurant associated with a hotel. Best food in quality and quantity on a non-french island since Tortola, with a table, far enough away from the band to hear the music but not impede conversation.
Here is Rona relaxing on ILENE.

On St. Lucia

Does this view look familiar? Maybe it is from Fort Napoleon, overlooking Iles des Saintes? Or Fort Shirley, overlooking Simpson Bay, Domenica? Good guesses, because they are similar, but this is from Fort Rodney, overlooking Rodney Bay, at the north end of St. Lucia, where, looking north, instead of southeast, as in this photo, the Brits thought they could keep a good eye on the French fleet in Martinique. (But not at night so I'm not sure that the prior statement makes sense.

The foot of this fort, which we reached by dink, followed a morning shopping trip to a big new US style supermarket (e.g., fat free half and half) also visited by dink. Somehow we lost our dink lock at the supermarket dinghy dock and had to buy a replacement to prevent its going missing. Next you see the fort at the top, built after the Napoleonic age and used by the US in WWII as a communications post.



















In a zoomed view of the Bay, showing the marina in the Lagoon, the big boat facing right is Baccarella, last seen in North Cove, Virgin Gorda; and we are one of the tiny specks to the right. you can see the narrow passage from the Bay into the Lagoon from the right side.


















After three days at Rodney Bay, we had a delightful passage down the coast, heading toward the south end of the island to shorten the next day's longer passage to St. Vincent. We had planned to stop at Marigot Bay, a lovely, tiny, well hidden cove, but the weather was so good that we kept going to Soufriere (it means "sulfurous air"). The wind was variable but pleasant and the sun was shining.

The Pitons, mountain peaks by the sea, are St. Lucia's national symbol. A stylized depiction of them are the triangle on her national flag.


They grace her eponymous national beer label.


But as we headed south, the island is so mountainous that Lene asked: "Which ones are the Pitons?" And then it became obvious:


Here we are, on our mooring under the Petit Piton.


There us a trail to the top, and you need to take a guide, so we have an activity for the return trip.

We spent our first afternoon in Soufriere at the Hummingbird Resort, with free swimming in their pool, free shower, and free (though very balky) wifi, if you eat dinner. I had king fish (it probably has a different name in other places) in a sauce of capers, lemon and white wine and coconut pie for desert, with more coconut than custard and ice cream to smooth it down. Then came the only hard part, launching the dinghy into the surf at night -- but we did not lose our electronics in the process.

Next day we visited the volcano with its steam, boiling pools, and sulfur dioxide smell. The river Styx, perhaps.


This most active part of the volcano (it has not erupted since the mid 18th century) is in a Caldera; the basin of a volcano whose peak has collapsed, as at Santorini in the Agean. Then to the botanical garden. Is this a Jackson Pollack plant?


It has a sulfurous waterfall; notice bands of color at its sides.


The garden is not as well done as the one in Deshaies, but our guide spoke English, though this photo is of our volcano guide.


Lunch was in this authentic looking place:


While the Calaloo soup and fried yam chips were good the fish roti was not. The next photo shows men doing what men do throughout the Caribbean:


Dominoes.
We went for a snorkel near the bat caves. This involved loading a lot of stuff into the dink and rigging a line to form a foot loop to boost oneself up on one side and and hand loop from the other side to pull ones self in. But because we were the only ones there at the time, the wind was strong, and the surf was a problem, Lene decided that discretion was the better part of valor. So we returned to our boat. Unfortunately, I did not tie up the dinghy properly and while I attended to other tasks, it floated away. When I noticed, a few minutes later, a man in a fishing boat was already towing it to us and took $20EC as his reward. Lene swam from the boat, we enjoyed a good home cooked meal, pulled up the dink onto its davit bar and had a good night sleep in anticipation of the morrow's passage.

Ilene did not enjoy Soufriere and for one reason: the aggressiveness of the boat boys, taxi drivers and street vendor/beggars. Everywhere else such poor people, who one can sympathize with, accept "No". We saw evidence of the destruction of hurricane Tomas. There is a lot of unemployment. The people had worked hard to clean up the worst mudslides since the hurricane, but some trails remained closed. We felt guilty not helping much, and did help a few. Our feelings are probably typical of tourists in poor nations. It is just that here they pestered us.

Martinique (cont'd) and to St. Lucia

As we had previously walked northeast along the coast to Club Med, today we walked southwest. We followed "La Trace du Caps" which we think means Trail of the Capes. It is well marked on the map and on the trail and is well maintained; well except that some small animals made lots of holes; note the dirt scraped out of the holes at their side.

It reminded us of walks on Long Island, Maine, with the sea on one side and the forest on the other; except in Maine, big North Atlantic rollers crashed on huge granite rocks while here, as we started on the lee side of the island, gentle waves lapped the shore. We walked on the narrow beach itself at times, and other times on cliffs to perhaps 100 feet in altitude. The trail is 34 kilometers long, each way, and we had not intended to finish it but walked even less of it, only to Point Dunquirk, where the high shot looking down was taken. this is because Roger's back is not fully healed. The next photo is of the Ste Anne anchorage area, ILENE is out there, but the purpose of this photo is to show a five minute rain storm which here was moving from right to left. Were it not there, Diamond rock would be quite visible.

Upon our return to the village, Roger rested in the church (see its chandelier, which swayed in the breeze through its large non-staned glass open windows) while Lene climbed the switchback path to the shrine/observation point above.




We had lunch in Les Tamarindiers. They made a dish that Roger wants to experiment and make for friends: Cassoulet de Canard au Fromage. The duck leg was cooked till it fell off the bone, the anticipated white beans had been replaced with tiny cubes of roasted potato, and the cheese, added last, we think, was Roquefort. Wow!

Next day we motored the two miles or so to Le Marin. This used to be a small town and is now wholly devoted to pleasure sailing, a "Port de Plaisance". Five or six yacht charter companies, mostly of and for Europeans, have their bases here. This is a very French island. The natives are black and the tourists are French. Roger was fearful that we were almost out of diesel fuel and this made our passage, by motor, through a well marked channel, guarded by nasty shoals on both sides, in 20 knots of wind, scary. We were prepared to fly the small jib to get out of there in a hurry if the motor stopped due to lack of fuel. False alarm: one tank was almost full. We fueled up and then anchored in Le Marin, reputed to be a hurricane hole. We did this partly to try to avoid the 20 to 25 knot winds that blew through the mooring field at Ste. Anne. But the same wind, from the east, blew here as well.

We took a dink ride into town to explore it and to mail postcards to our grand daughter in Oregon and buy a few things. This simple task became a problem when we got stuck on the bottom in our dink. The harbor is arranged thus: To the north is the marina and fuel dock. south of this an area where boats are moored, then comes a shallow area and finally the area where boats anchor, where we were. We knew that the shallow area was too shallow for our boat, with its 5' 8" draft to cross, and so had rounded it to the east in going to our anchorage. But having seen other dinghys crossing the shallows, we sought to do likewise and got the outboard prop stuck in the strong weeds and the mud. We learned that our new AB inflatable dinghy has a lousy rowing system and ended up (A) digging around the propeller by hand to free the prop so it could be raised and then (B) using the oars to pole ourselves out of the shallow area. There are deeper paths through this swamp but they are unmarked. So we had some excitement and the mud washed out of our clothes.

We also started listening to weather reports on our SSB radio. What a complicated system that is: you have to learn how to tune in to a channel, which we have now mastered; there are hundreds of them. Then you have to know which channels have weather reports and at which times they are broadcast (but the times are in Greenwich Mean Time so you have to subtract four hours to get to Atlantic Standard Time). And then the weather reports are in a sort of code, so you have to wait for them to mention the area that includes you and the final problem is that they talk very fast and reception, even in our top of the line ICOM 802 SSB with Tuner, is poor. But the bottom line is big winds and hence big waves were expected the next few days, though the following day seemed better than the next few.

So the next morning we cleared out of French Douanes (Customs) and took off for Rodney Bay, at the noth end of the west coast of St. Lucia, where we are now. With the wind expected slightly aft of the port beam at 15 to 20 knots, we used a double reefed main and small jib. The winds were in the predicted direction, but from 17 knots in lulls to 27 knots in gusts and the rollers entered the side of the Caribbean from the Atlantic at up to 15 feet in height. Even with such reduced sail we felt slightly overpowered at times and held our 205 degrees magnetic course, plus or minus 25 degrees, as the waves picked us up in one direction and we slid off in a different direction. Autopilot couldn't handle it so Roger steered. But it was a very fast 22 mile passage once we got the sails up--less than three hours.

Here in St Lucia, we put into the Rodney Bay Marina in a lagoon behind the bay, where we checked into customs. This was the first time ILENE has been at a dock, other than momentarily at a fuel dock, since we left Nanny Cay, the day after Thanksgiving. We are at a very modern well equipped marina with real slips, wide piers and lots of services. In Rhode Island the cost would be $3 - 5 per foot per night. Here, in high season, it is $0.70 per foot. We had our laundry done, hired a man to clean our stainless steel which was getting rusty, and cleaned the interior of the boat.

Martinique

O.K. Lene can no longer claim that she is not happy here, despite a scrape to her ankle when she fell carrying groceries. Behind her is a life saving device, the hydraulic backstay adjusted and our dinghy resting in her davit bar. incidentally, i have just learned that by clicking on any posted photo one can enlarge it.

Martinique is the largest, most populous and most developed island in these parts, but internet access has been a problem for the last five days, so I will present only highlights of those days.

We made three passages: from Roseau,Dominica to the northernmost port in Martinique: St. Pierre; from there along the west (sheltered) coast of that island to Fort du France, and finally along the lower west coast and south coasts of Martinique, eastward to Ste. Anne, a fishing village turned tourist village where we are now. These passages were uneventful with strong winds between islands and at the mouth of the huge bay in which F du F is located and moderate winds when in the lee of islands. On the first trip we were entertained by (or was it the other way around) by a pod of porpoises that frolicked along with us for a few minutes. The last trip was made interesting by the failure of our GPS, auto pilot and my back. So we hand steered and dead reckoned our position and Lene took a more active role. It was daylight after all and we had a chart and prominent landmarks like diamond rock, 560 feet high, which we tacked behind.


Before leaving Roseau Lene wanted to take on water. Our boat boy directed us near the mooring nearest his dock (which was occupied at that time by another boat) and tied us to the same mooring with a double length mooring line. Then he took another double length line from our stern, tied us to the dock and passed a garden hose to us. Easy! $10US.

In St Pierre, Martinique, we anchored in pretty deep water near the town dock. The next photo is from that dock and shows ILENE flying the tricolor of our host nation at the spreader as well as Old Glory from the stern.


I got a haircut, so my visage will henceforth be less shaggy for a while, and we toured the museum of the Volcano. St Pierre used to be called "the Paris of the Caribbean" with a large theater, botanical gardens, telephone lines, etc. But in the spring of 1902, Mt. Pelee, overlooking the city, erupted like Mt. St. Helens. Everyone except one prisoner, saved by the depth of his underground jail cell, about 30,000 folks in all, died. So the old city could now be called the Pompeii of the Caribbean. The current town is built just to the south of the original but has only 4000 residents. These two photos are of the stage and below of the grand entrance to the excavated theater:



Fort du France is a real city, the largest I have entered since New York, with 100,000 residents, a raised six-lane limited-access highway and an American style, enclosed two-story mall, Le Galleria, which, of course, nostalgia compelled us to visit, walking all of its halls. The big draw for us there was a large supermarket where we dropped 200 Euros on not only foods for us but French cat food (they loved it!) and litter and a plastic pail to replace the one that got away from Lene during one passage. Our other major activity in the two days in that city was a rendezvous and dinner out with Rory and David Craig, of "Aurora", with who we had celebrated Thanksgiving way back in Nanny Cay, Tortola, 2 1/2 months ago. We had a lot of catching up to do. The restaurant, La Cave au Vin, was quite swank and modern and gourmet. I had a grilled whole conch; so now I know why it is used ground up in fritters and soups: it is chewy (tough). A band of 40 drummers serenaded us while practicing in a parking lot on our way back to the boat.

Here in Ste. Anne, we fixed the electronics (we think); it was loose wires (we hope). Hand steering, beating to windward, fixing loose wires and dinner aboard was not the way I had hoped to celebrate Lene growing a day older on her birthday; but she is a trooper. Today we walked around this charming little town looking for and finding the Club Med -- but it is full and takes only weekly visitors. So we had a celebratory lunch at a restaurant which had been recommended by one of Lene's successful candidates, who visits these French islands often.



We plan to stay in Martinique for a few more days during which high winds are predicted. There are some hikes and beaches, though swimming from the boat beats beaches: privacy, no sand, shade when you want it, no commute.