Position: 14:44:36N 61:10:66W

The anchorage at Grand Anse was very busy, but, in search of a bit of challenge in our otherwise sedentary lives, decided to sail off the anchor again.  It all went well until the wind shifted and we were heading directly for the boat next to us, sails filling, in one of those hideous situations where you’re trying to bear off behind them but you’re not sure if you’re going to make it…  With half a boatlength until we T-boned him I bailed out and headed up with a burst on the engine and a burst of adrenaline shooting down our veins.  All good fun!

After having melted our Cobb barbeque into an artistic sculpture, we have been barbeque-less and in this heat, it is good to get out of the kitchen and cook outside.  So when we saw that some friends on a HR53 “Saskia” were selling their barbeque back in Rodney Bay (they didn’t have enough space - ?? on a 53ft boat??), we quickly bought it off them.  Consequently, we’ve renewed our interest in fishing and threw our kit over the side. Unfortunately, we must have thrown it out into the midst of a big fish convention because we managed to lose two sets of lures in quick succession.  When Sarah pulled in the paravane the third time, all the feather lures had gone, and the paravane had monster teeth-marks in it!!  Whatever it was that had a bite even managed to score the lead weight!  I am very glad we didn’t catch whatever it was – perhaps it was a shark?

Whose teeth were these!?

Another lovely sail brought us into St Pierre, on the NE coast of Martinique.  This unfortunate town was buried under a volcano eruption in 1902. The most unfortunate thing was that despite plenty of warning, the governor either couldn’t handle the decision to evacuate, or was persuaded to delay because of some impending elections, and the whole town was buried with 30,000 dead and only two survivors.  Today, some of the old building survive and modern buildings have been built on or next to the old runis.  It makes for an eerie architecture.

You have to anchor on a narrow “shelf between the shore and about 100m out, where the seabed drops away hundreds of metres.  It feels a little precarious knowing that if your anchor drags, it’ll just fall off the shelf and hang into the deep briny…  We’ve been leapfrogging our Dutch friends on “Yara” since leaving Rodney Bay so despite arriving bang-on sunset, I rowed over to get the lowdown.  They are heading the same way as us.

Off to visit friends, St Pierre Martinique

Mix of old & new, St Pierre Martinique