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
