Hi everyone, hope you are all well?

Lilli Mae is now definitely on her way to Mo’Bay. We set off from St Lucia on Sunday 29th January after a week of preparation in the marina and a very nice night at anchor in Rodney Bay itself just south of Pigeon Island. Before we left St Lucia we had the opportunity to visit old haunts (Spinnakers, Rodney Bay) for two-for-one cocktails and well known holiday hot-spots (Marigot Bay) for chilling out. 

Whilst we were in Rodney Bay Marina one of our (Howard’s) colleagues from Smiths Detection in Wiesbaden, Germany came to visit. Peter had just retired and had heard that we were in St Lucia. It was great catching up on old colleagues and exchanging our plans for our new found retirement freedoms (thanks Christine).

Whilst at anchor in Rodney Bay we purchased final bottle of rum punch and some fruit for the gin and tonics from the “vegetable and rum punch guy” who visited the boat.

Our planned route takes us 300 nm north to Antigua and then another 800 nm west to Mo’Bay (position L). Our scheduled arrival in Mo’Bay is 7th March. As you can imagine there is a lot of arranging to be done for our arrival and stay in Jamaica. We are really looking forward to it! We have to be Puerto Rico by the 26th Feb to meet sons and daughters who are sailing with us to Jamaica. Lilli Mae is really going home!

Right now we are in Martinique anchored in the bay of a small place called St Pierre (position C) in the north of this beautiful island. We had a couple of nights anchored and in the marina in the south at St Anne's and Le Marin where we did two huge shopping trips to Carrefour to Fort-de-France.

We had a lovely sail up the coast of Martinique together with our buddy boat Mairmade (a Hanse 588) who we met in Gibraltar with who we sailed across the Atlantic. Mairmade and Lilli Mae are sailing together as far as Antigua. Hugh (skipper of Mairmade) snapped a picture of Lilli Mae passing Fort-de-France that we really liked. 

We have decided to stay in St Pierre for today and one more night before heading for Prince Rupert Bay, Portsmouth on Dominica tomorrow.

Anyway that’s it for now. Sorry that it has been so long since I last reported in but I will do better going forward. Our tracker is on and the blog is being updated. The details for these are in the signature block at the end. 

We leave you with a picture "looking out of our window” a few moments ago. Hopefully the sun will come out soon!

All the best wherever you are.

The crew aboard Lilli Mae