Feb. 17, 2009 - The Great Leap North

We finally got fed up with Rodney bay and St Lucia – you can only have so much of a good thing and to celebrate my twiddlyumpty sixth birthday, headed North to Antigua.  As internet is going to be iffy I am doing a daily diary and will post when I can.  One problem is that to avoid having to check into every island and then out again we will keep our yellow customs flag up and not actually go ashore  – its called exercising your right to free passage, just hope the customs chap in Antigua has read the same rules as me.  This means that internet may be hard to come by.

Anyway – Day one.  An early ish start with a slightly sore head as Troutbridge came over last night and helped me finish off my last bottle of ‘Jack Iron’ 70% rum.  The weather was cr*p, raining all night and quite blowy, this despite all the forecasts that Monday was going to be light winds and sunny.  We sailed clear of St Lucia on the way to St Pierre at the top of Martinique and the weather perked up a bit, ie it stopped raining, the wind stayed at 20 knots.  Not a bad sail but for the first time we saw no whales nor caught no fishies – despite using my mate Peter’s ‘absolutely guaranteed to catch fish’ lure, harrumph.  I am writing this entry snugly anchored quite close to the beach waiting for the drizzle to stop.  Tomorrow should be better but we are warned of some nasty northerly swells due to set in on Wednesday.  Our current plan of cunningness is to get to Guadeloupe by then and hide in a secure anchorage what we know about, until they have gone.

Thought I’d put the photo of the most outrageous superyacht we’ve seen so far on as well – the boat on the deck is a 55 foot yacht – there is a 55 foot power boat the other side. Not fair I want one.

The photo of the volcano above is the one that killed 30,000 people in  1908  in St Pierre where we stayed the night, when despite all the warnings no-one was prepared to leave.  Its very rare to see it free of cloud which was a good omen for the next leg North.

Day Two – aarrrgh and still no sign of land – we’ll be at the drinking our own …   - no hang on that’s a Black Adder script.  In fact we’ve had a great days sail and are currently in Portsmouth Bay in Dominica.  The big question now is do we stay here for a few days or nip up to Guadaloupe tomorrow as we need somewhere to hide from the big Northerly swells.  On the plus side there’s good interweb here and a great beach bar, on the negative side they play loud music all night on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  On the other hand we could be stuck in a rather boring but much more sheltered bay just to the North of here, decisions decisions.

Thanks to all who sent Birthday greetings, e-cards etc both to me and Fi last week.  In fact we have now reached the ‘level of maturity’ which means we don’t like to be reminded!!