Martinique

Church in Anse d'arlet

Since arriving in Martinique, we have anchored in 5 different bays. The port of clearance was St. Pierre, which is a small town on the northern part of Martinique. The tourist office has computers for checking in and it was free! We love free! The anchorage in St. Pierre is deep and you have to go a few hundred yards from shore to anchor in 15-20 ft of water. There were northerly swells the night we were there which made it a bit uncomfortable!
The second anchorage was in Fort De France. It’s a relatively small place to anchor and it’s busy with ferry traffic. One night when we came back to take the dinghy back to the boat, we saw the crew of a Danish boat stranded without their dinghy. It was stolen from the dock, so we rowed them to their boat and showed empathy. Fortunately, I don’t really have to worry about Earthling 8.8, since most of the time there is no outboard on it and if somebody took it, they wouldn’t get far! Based on experience, there is more crime in big cities than small towns! I made a rule after our experience in Ponce, that anytime we anchor in an urban area, we have to lock up everything!  
Our friend on “Margaret” recommended a visit to Anse d’Arlet. There is a Grande and Petite Anse d’Arlet and we anchored in the small one since the Grande was too busy! However, there was a reason that one was busier than the other! Petite Anse d’Arlet is not as protected and can become very rolly. We could not wait to wake up in the morning and sail to the next place! There is a trail from petite to grande over the hill, but you might get lost and end up on the cliffs and rocks on the other side, which almost happen to us! Easier route is to take the major road and walk 20 minutes on the flat surface. 
The easter weekend, we were anchored in Ste. Anne, which is a small touristy town, with many small restaurants, bars, and a beautiful long beach. Ste. Anne was packed during that weekend with families camping, barbecuing, and partying on the beach. This anchorage was calm and comfortable. 
Our last stop was in Marin and it is crazy how many boat are anchored here! Marin is definitely the yachting center of Martinique and the windwards! There are boat yards and chandeliers, but the prices are based on the European standards! I was looking for a small o-ring for the sink and it cost €2.50, forget about it! Furthermore, Marin is a hurricane hole and no matter how windy it is, you don’t move much. We checked out here a few minutes ago without being charged. The French Islands are great to check in and out of! You put all your info in a computer and nobody asks to look at any paperwork, passports or boat documents! With the exception of St. Barts, the French islands have the cheapest custom and immigration fees! It’s expensive to stay in St. Barts, the charge is based on the size of the boat per day, it cost us €8.5 per day!   

The highlight of the visit in Martinique was the Easter weekend and Des Accras (Crab festival) traditional ceremony. The street stands serving fried crabs and other fried sea food have valuable deals; I bought 6 pieces of fried crabs in dough for 2 Euros outside the church in Fort de France and in Ste. Anne. Unfortunately Nico can not have any fried food because of his stomach issues (hernia)! On the other side, Nico is a great cook and since he joined Earthling, it’s been easier for me to give up the cooking responsibilities to him. I have to admit that the food served aboard is more healthy now! Some of the beautiful architectures in Martinique are the Catholic churches. During the Easter weekend, the bells were heard more often than ever, it is after all a peak season for the churches! 
“Zero to Cruising” posted a great update about the Easter crab festivities in Martinique, check it out here!

I finally found time to finish installing the AIS unit purchased a few months ago. AIS stands for Automatic Identification System and it works like a digital radar! It’s required by law for all large commercial vessels. It simply identifies and communicates with other vessels by name, speed, heading, GPS location, destination, classification, call sign, etc. There are receivers and transceivers. The unit installed on Earthling is a West Marine AIS 1000 transceiver and it’s connected to the Garmin Chart plotter. It has only one button, which is the silent mode, where you can receive and not transmit! In some waters in the world it’s necessarily to utilize that button to avoid piracy!
A common collision scenario is between commercial and pleasure craft at night or in bad weather conditions. AIS definitely minimizes that risk!
It’s important that large vessels see a small sailboat like Earthling, and if I’m single handing and asleep, it will beep till I wake up! The alarm can be set based on time or distance. Pleasure craft are not required by law to have this unit but I would recommend it to cruising boats that make long and overnight passages. In addition, it is fun to use it in busy ports or anchorages. This little project was accomplished with the help of Mike Sweeny! 

The Island of St. Lucia is awaiting our arrival tomorrow. 

Love from Martinique

View the photo album of Martinique here!

A Passage to Remember

The time for our stay in Sint Maarten was up and we decided to sail to St. Barth for New Years Eve. Rumors state that St. Barthelemy is the top spot for the New Year’s celebration in the Caribbean. The distance from Sint Maarten to St. Barth is only 17 Nautical Miles and it shouldn’t take more than a few hours to do this passage... NOT! This passage was one of the most memorable passages ever. Let’s put it this way, we never made it to St. Barth on the same day!
The wind is blowing 20 to 25 miles per hour from the east. The main sail is double reefed and only 1/3 of the genoa is furled out. We are beating into short steep 8-10 ft waves with 1-2 knots current against us. In 5 hours we sailed only 10 miles toward the destination. In addition we are towing two dinghies, our regular Earthling 8.8 ft hard dinghy and the newly acquired 11 ft inflatable dinghy. We tacked a handful of times and it felt like sailing in a washing machine. This is not a pleasant sailing experience! The boat is heeling over and getting washed over again and again.
St. Barthelemy Channel is known for high steep seas because it’s so shallow. The waves build up easy and on top of that it is windy! Many sailors don’t have the patience to sail all the way so they motor sail, but we are eager and stubborn to make this passage under sail. Having said that, we would not have made it to our anchorage in St. Barth before sunset strictly under sail so we had to turn the engine on. The engine was on for about an hour before it stopped working and shut down. It reminded me of the passage from Key Largo to Miami when the system got air in it because I was heeling over on a low tank (read Engine Failure). I thought the engine sucked in air so while Kelly is behind helm I’m trying to bleed the air out of the system. This is not our lucky day, the inboard is not cooperating. Now we don’t have any other option than to use the wind and anchor under sail.
New Year’s Eve is the busiest time in St. Barth for yachts and any many visit Gustavia. I’m thinking, how am I going to maneuver around all these boats and find a good anchorage under sail after dark! I’m nervous, stressed and concentrated. Well, we can’t go to St. Barth and the closest anchorage on the current tack is Ile Fourchue. That’s where we are going, I told Kelly, since it’s not crowded and we can make it before dark. Luckily, there was a big spot between 2 sailboats and a mega yacht. As we are approaching you can tell the few boat around are looking at us wondering why we are sailing into an anchorage. I drop the anchor, we furled in the jib and dropped the main all in less than 10 seconds. The boat is drifting back and I’m just praying that the anchor is going to set. The anchor line gets tight and the boat stops. The gentlemen on the boat  next to us start clapping with a thumbs up, like we did this out of choice! I take a deep breath and feel a little more relieved.
I spend most of the next day in the engine room, changing primary and secondary fuel filters, checking for fuel flow, bleeding air, checking for air flow, cleaning the air filter, inspecting fuel hoses, inspecting the water flow, cleaning the raw water strainer, and so forth. Still, we are out of luck. This Yanmar 3GM inboard is taking a break and it’s not running. I don’t know what else to do, we don’t have the engine owner’s manual since it was stolen in Puerto Rico 7 months ago (Read We've been robbed). Plus, there is no internet or phone  on this little uninhabited island. We have to get to St. Barth, and this time we have to pull up the anchor under sail. Fortunately, all the boats were gone and there was plenty of room to navigate. Two hours later, here we are sailing toward a new anchorage in a very tight and crowded area without an engine. We are tacking between mega yachts. St. Barth is such a beautiful place and the view of hundreds of bigs yachts is exceptional. I have never seen so many gathered in one place. After all, it’s nerve racking not to have an engine going into an anchorage. I’m very anxious and nervous. Before leaving Ile Fourchue, we located Shell Beach on the charts, a site that is relatively idle with a good holding sandy bottom. Furthermore, the entrance to Shell Beach is considerably narrow. As we are approach, there are many boats with people on them partying and it literally seems impossible to sail through all them. The only thing I can do is pray and hope for the best. After 7-8 tacks in a half a mile distance, our angels nust have heard us and began to blow a breeze on our beam and bring the boat as close as possible to the beach in 10 ft of water. The people are swimming away from us, the people on the boats and beach are watching and pointing at us. We drop anchor 150 feet from the beach and 200 feet from a rocky cliff. We must have put on a show dropping anchor, main, and furling the jib all in no time. We drift back and we are set. Hoooooooahhh is all I can say!

Last night we walked to the board walk in St. Barth, intermingled with billionaires, danced, and celebrated the New Years.
Engine is still underpowered
Happy New Year 2012

Love from a Passage to Remember