Martinique to Dominica

Mor Toad / Moy Toad
David and Jocelyn Fawcett
Fri 20 Feb 2015 01:10
15:16.80N 61:22.53W

We left at 7.45 this morning and had a very very perky crossing at one point doing 8 knots with 2 reefs in the main! Plenty of sea over the spray hood drenching the skipper. Merryn did really well and was happy most of the time keeping mum company who was not feeling so good much to her annoyance. Sam was sick this time but he slept for most of the crossing. Once we were in the lee of the island suddenly it was flat calm. Great relief. We had emailed and called ahead to Sea Cat on a friend's recommendation to reserve a mooring. This worked very well as we called him up on the radio as we came into the bay and he came out to meet us and show us where to go and later took David and Alex to Immigration, took our washing to be done and advised us what trips we could do. So that is organised for tomorrow - a trip round the south of the island. We've all had a good swim round the boat and we even have a tiny reef not far from the mooring with some good coral on it and fish. We expect to be here three nights before moving to the north of the island.

Martinique was interesting with some interesting architecture in the various places we went to but busy, full of French holiday makers and yachtsman but as mentioned previously it has also been pretty noisy everywhere with Carnival for 4 days - quite impressive but I can still hear the drum beat in my mind. Hopefully now will be a lot quieter and in any case all the festivities should be finished now as we are into Lent. We sadly didn't get up Mount Pelee as yesterday was pretty grey and wet though the top did appear late afternoon. We did however have a walk round the town and we walked up to the Virgin Mary overlooking the bay and David and I ended up in the next town down a track we had found but had no real idea where it would end up. In the event having ignored a private sign we ended up in a magical sort of garden which turned out to be a Jardin du Papillon. We paid out 10 euros as we had entered Illegally by the back entrance. In the event he did give us a lift back to St Pierre as he said it was too dangerous to walk along the road. So all good.