Landfall Martinique

Catmojo
Matt
Tue 8 Dec 2020 12:23
14:21N 60:46W

The wind picked up yesterday so we had a pleasant downwind sail, gybing a few times during the day and into the evening. Yet another nice sunset prommpted the crew cameras and video but no green flash. I explain that "Caribbean" means "Sick of Sunsets" in the ancient Arawak language of the original Carib inhabitants of these islands. Really, Matthew? No of course not, I just made it up.

Once within a hundred miles or so of the tarhet waypoint we saw a couple of other boats, including Songbird of London motoring towards St Lucia in the darkness and lumpy sea. An ARC boat, we saw it in Las Palmas. Up close they swept across us with no sails up, plenty of lights inclusing red as well as green navigation lights on their port side, very Christmassy, or maybe Welsh. Wonky lights could be a result of rough weather, and likewise ignoring any navigation conventions and/or listening to the VHF, whatever.

Kinda spooked by this I put on the engine and headed more tightly towards Martinique. There's also the issue that our watch system which works great for an ocean passage also means that there's always just one other person on watch, which gets iffy if I'm tired and there's rocky stuff around.

Daybreak with a great view of Martinique from the south-east. Very calm sea, slight wind, so although we had another go at sailing it kinda didn't work with just 2knots VMG and we're motoring in bright sunshine, seabirds catching breakfast, and an almost cloudless blue sky.

We've put the clocks back three times duing the trip, and just once more at daybreak puts us on Martinique local time GMT minus 4hours.

So, a very thorough explanation of the sailing I think, and obviously PURE CHANCE that we'll arrive within about 5 minutes of my guesstimate two weeks ago, ahem. Aixa is a bit dubious but she was out by 4 hours. Heyho.

Now within 5 miles we get phone signals and exchange Hiya messages. Did you all arrive safely? Yeah apart from one or two fell off on the way. I don't think we'd be saying Hiya and Coooeee if everything WASN'T all fine. There's no need to be like that, Matthew.