Underway to Martinique – 12 July

Well today we where planning to get caught up on internet and then leave in the evening to sail south to st lucia. however once we got on line we discovered the winds where switching around to the south in the evening so it looked like our best shot would be to leave straight away and just sail the 50nm or so to st martinique. by the time we got the dingy back and everything organized straight away was more like 10am. the sail started out great but shortly after we left the arbor and got into the lee of the land the winds started to not cooperate. even 2 miles off the coast we had winds out of the west and south, opposite of the forecast. we presumed them to be land winds and tried to play them but it took us most of the day to get the 25 nm down the coast with a combination of motoring drifting and sailing. we even thought about stopping at one point.

it was 4pm by the time we had good winds and we still had 25nm to go to the first anchorage in martinique so i figured we where stuck with another overnight sail. as we cleared the point the current and wind where perfect and we where averaging 7.5 to 8kts with speeds up to 9 at points! i made some calculations and figured we could get in about half an hour or so after sunset if the winds held and we kept trimming the sails to make 7+kts.

we trimmed away all afternoon and kept flying but in the end got winds on the nose at 15 kts for the last hour. we had a great bean and salsa dip for happy hour and ended up anchoring about an hour after sunset which was a bit dicy as there was no moon but we had bright lights from shore by the time we lost the sun completely. as it turns out 14 july is bastille day so we may hang for another day and try to find some festivities.

fyi, the spot check link seems to be working again, it is the “location” menu on the main page.

Cheers, Roger