New Years Eve…on Mustique would have been extraordinary, but, No, we must start to make our way back north, the ladies fly out 3 days from now.

So after having had (a rather bad) breakfast ashore at the “Purple House” we set sails for St.Vincent again. 

The nicety of sailing here is thst the winds are very constant easterly, 15-25 knots while you are sailing north or south.  So you have a reach in fresh wind and make good distances.  We moor on a buoy in the sound inside Young Island on the southern tip of St.Vincent.  On the island itself lies a very nice looking, posh resort with bar and restaurant , tennis courts, and a lot of small bungalows up on the hill side.  A stone path led around to the west side for the sun set, which was not to be today: A large squall cloud loomed out there.  Here we met Jimmy, an American from Mississippi, who showed great interest in “boat life”, apparently very different from the week he had had on the island: He made the impression of being somewhat trapped.

Marion and Leif took an evening walk...in the starting rain after which we prepared new years dinner the best we could: Some nice apperitifs, champagne…...

Fire cracker celebration started exactly at 2400, oh, discipline !  The resort spent a lot, some on the “main land” and in the far south, on the horizon, Mustique exploded.

Up early and morning dip/ breakfast as usual.  Today we are going to Mustique, a fabled rather unique “construct”. The island is some 5x2 km and was apparently uninhabited until 1960 when it was “found” (?) by an English entrepreneur who promptly turned it into a privately owned housing association.  Here lives Princess Margret, Mick Jaegger, Elton John and other celebs.  A narrow slate of land to the west is accessible to commoners like us.  We moor at a buoy (EC$ 200), walk the land southwards and snorkel a bit in very shallow water.  A lot of "private property, no trespassing” and a lot of poisonous trees (?!) (“do not stand beneath them in rain…!).

Eventually we did have dinner at the famed Basil’s Bar, very good and reasonably priced, actually.  The swells come under the board walk where the table was laid and almost sloshed around our feet.  Exotic !!

We decide to stay the day and explore the island.  Michaela has homed in on Bequia Beach Hotel on the other side, at Friendship Bay, and promptly takes a cab.  This hotel is run by a Swedish couple and they apparently run Swedish Julafton and Nyårsafton (Christmas and New Year celebrations) the Swedish way. The hotel is not “all inclusive”, although exclusive enough, and this means that we can stay on the beach and have lunch in their restaurant.  Marion walks across the island, it is only 2-3 kms.. and Leif tags along.

We have a rather wonderful “vacation beach day”; swim, stroll along the beach, a luxurious lunch and then we walk back to Port Elisabeth.   Michael buys the sarong she has coveted since yesterday, very expensive but very nice indeed.

This evening we finally make it to Tommy’s.  Their tune fish “steak” was delicious….

Up and away…!  We aim south and sail to Port Elisabeth on Bequia, supposedly a “Swedish hole” (not that we care a whole lot about that….)  A couple of hour’s sail over the next hop in the island chain; Bequia is well visible from St.Vincent.  Port Elisabeth is a huge bay facing west where hundreds of boats lie anchored up.  Along the southern shore are a number of beautiful beaches, linked together by a scenic board walk/stone pathway.  We explore the localities, do some shopping of food stuff and souvenirs; a Swedish lady runs a boutique since 20 years back; she carries beautiful, locally made stuff but is quite expensive.  Leif meets Al and Irene again

Dinner was planned at one of the restaurants along the shore, Tommy’s, but as we are preparing the dinghy, there is a huge squall so we change palns and stay on the boat where  Michaela prepares a pasta adeli.   

Waking up, taking s morning swim and the breakfast in the cockpit is now standard procedure.          We then take the dinghy to the shore and explore the surroundings. On the key strange things are displayed: dilapidated coffins, a hangman’s gallows…(?)  What is this?  We go into an old house and, alas, this is where they casted the “Pirates of the Caribbean’s” and the whole story is on display inside.

We collect a load of exquisite vegetables from Stavan, drink coco-water and take a walk up to the very touristique waterfall a couple of kilometres up the road.  It turns out to be very diminutive…..further up the road towards the ridge we see a fence that allegedly conceals the island prison.  We can obtain customs clearance at a local office but have to pass through immigration at a later stage elsewhere; bureaucracy is everywhere. In the afternoon we enjoy our fins for the first time and snorkel about in clear water with corals and a multitude of fish.  Marion has a bit of a nasty experience where she looses one of the fins and she is thrown onto some rock while trying to recover it.  Ends well, though. 

We stay the night and have a good diner at the local Pirate restaurant

The canyon between the mountains leading down to Soffrière bay funnels rain showers down over our boat.  It appears that when the trade winds from the east are forces up across the high mountains of these islands, clouds form and rain falls.  The morning is very wet and we decide to go south. In order to leave St.Lucia we need to check out of the country and this can be done at Vieux Fort, at the southern tip.  This involves a couple of hours motoring into the wind and we finally moor next to a jetty for big boats exporting bananas.  Vieux Fort is not uplifting.  Poor and destitute and when we get there most shops are closed.  We have a long walk to the international airport, Huevanorra, and are duly passed out by customs and immigration.  We take a taxi back via “southern market” a decidedly  downmarket local store for some missing food items.

After some deliberations we decide to leave for St.Vincent despite the rather late hour.  1500 hours means arrival in the dark on the other side.  This is not improved by the fact that the furled mainsail gets stuck and Leif is hoisted up the mast to pull it out. (The mainsail is very old, mended and basically a great big sack.  Too much cloth mid mast makes it prone to not come out properly and this is a real nuisance.  There is simply a want for a new sail).

We reach Vallilabou at 2100 and make our entry into the bay very slowly.  All of a sudden there is a voice calling and a man, Stevan, appears sitting on a surf board.  He directs us to cast anchor, turn the boat around and then back up towards the beach where he carries a rope and ties on to a tree.   We are finally moored 15 m. from the beach in 4 m of perfectly calm water.  Stevan collects our garbage and will deliver fresh bread in the morning, all at the cost of some few “easy dollars”.   We maker evening among 15 other yachts tied up the same way.

Gorgeous morning, as usual.  We decide to make it for the Pigeon Island beach in the dinghy to explore.  The shore establishment is a “Sandahls” hotel, which turns out to be “all inclusive”.  For 100 US$ we get a day ticket; we decide against this.  The next hotel even has a little harbour of its own even more posh and exclusive.  So instead we enter the Pigeon Island state park and pay a fee of 20 EC $ each.  On Pigeon Island lies Fort Rodney named after the admiral who definitely made St.Lucia British.  He had his crew to haul 3 huge ship cannons up the hill to dominate the bay beneath.  The climb up the hill above the fort is step and rather scary, but we get the physical exercise we needand fell ready to set sails.

We make it for Souffrière, just north of the two Pitons, the two very pointed volcanic peaks that are the symbols of St.Lucia.  We anchor up and make it for the shore in the dinghy. “Oh, you are from Whistler” a woman on the jetty says (no, we are not but skipper wears a T-shirt from Whistler).  Irene and Al Whitney on Darwin Sound lay next to us….and instead of going to a restaurant we end up having dinner in their boat with daughter Charlotte and her husband Vernon.

Over an absolutely delicious tuna dinner, cooked by Veron (a trained chef), we heard about their leaving academic teaching and set up business on a big sailboat (72 footer) to take scientists of different kinds to remote places to do research (!!)  They had had Nobel laureates on board. Extraordinary story.

We turn Christmas Eve into a restful day by ourselves.  After the benefits of unlimited shower facilities, a “full English breakfast” at one of the shore establishments and some provisioning at the local supermarket, we motor out of the marina in the afternoon and cast anchor in the Bay itself.  Here are anchored a great number of boats of all shapes and size the Carribean way.  This means a free and reasonable free spot of the sea where one can swim, not necessarily in  a swim suit, listen to music in the cockpit, etc, the next boat is usually 100 meters away.  When the sun finally sets into the sea, at about 5:30 in the afternoon the evening activities can begin.  Snacks in the cockpit followed by dinner.  Already at, say, 2100 we retreat to reading, or, Michaela, listening to books in the iPhone.

The nights are usually reasonable temperatured, not excruciatingly hot so we sleep rather well.

Weather in the morning is kind of bad, lots of showers, so we decide to leave for St.Lucia and Rodney Bay rather abruptly after breakfast.  This is a 25 mile jump in the trade winds, a fresh reach in 20-25 knot winds.  We get the mainsail out about 65% and use the cutter jib and this powers us quite enough.  It is a wonderful sail, really, and we arrive already early afternoon (1300).  We go into the marina get a berth and hook up to the power grid.  In order o have power, our options are to hook up every other day or to run the main engine about 6 hours daily. It is imperative to keep the batteries reasonably full or the will be damaged. 

We take the dinghy out through the channel and on to the beach, wanting to test life on the sunny side.  On the lee side of the island there are no waves but, we find out, there are swells that are quite unobtrusive until the last 10 meters.  Like small tsunamis. With the ladies ashore and Leif fiddeling with the motor one of the appear and half-fills the dinghy.  Everything is wet including an iPhone  So the phone and shoes are brought up a fair bit onto the beach before we try to pull the dínghy up.  Suddenly, a quite extraordinare swell pulls up in the beach, grabs shoes and iPhone and flush everything out into the water.  Quite dramatic actually and devastating for the phone.  Well, we dry it up and put it in a sac full with rice to dry it out. It regains 95% of all capabilities....! We have learnt a lesson

We enjoy orderly life inside marina in the evening, go to the grocery store to fill up on exclusives (champagne for Christmas), use money machines (here we need Eastern carribean dollars - EC dollars or "easy dollars"), shower etc.    We also buy fins and face masks for the ladies in order to get at the underwater world more appropriately.

Dinner at a local restaurant in the marina.

Nights are hot – in the beginning, but later they are quite comforting.  You can actually usually sleep.  Then, in the morning, a dip is quite refreshing, you just step out of the boat.  Water temperature aroung 28 degrees, though....!  Marion and skipper decided on a morning walk, which could be done across the local promontory down to Petit Anse d’Arlet. The walk proved quite wild, up and down but finally we found ourselves in a much larger and nicer place.  We could buy  baguettes at the boulangerie, directed there by a very bourgoise lady, could have been on vacation from from Paris (?) and then it was a quick walk on the "highway” back to Grand Anse.

We so liked Grand Anse that we took the boat around the corner and anchored up in Petit Anse; there was some local architecture that we wanted Michaela to see. 

In the afternoon we dinghied to shore during a local shower (it does rain a lot, actually, short showers, and you dry up quickly enought afterwards). 

Evening/dinner procedures develop: In the cool evening rhum "refreshments" are needed followed by some cooking; Michaela is doing simple but well-tasting things. Wine.  An early midnight swin before bed complets the evening.

We decided to stay the morning to go and have a look at the city centre and to get provisions.  Martinique is a part of France, not a affiliated province but and integral part, and hence well developed.  A cab down to the city centre is not all that exiting; a tourist trap proper, but provisioning at Carrefour is rewarding indeed….So eventually, we cab down to the boat with sacks of deli food, needed stable provisions and a variety of liquids..

We decide to go for “the Caribbean stuff”, that is to find a calm bay and cast anchor.  Hence we sneak around the southern corner of “la Rade” and find the Grand Anse d’Artlet.

Standard procedure here is to tip-toe towards a beach, find a spot among other yachts and let the anchor go.  From here one moves around by the dinghy, which now really proves itself.  The davits have been just perfect. All the way across the ocean, the dinghy has been as bolted to the boat; not the slightest movement.  Now, we lower it easily into the water.  With some difficulty we subsequently transfer the outboard motor from the push pit onto the dinghy and lock it is place; voilà, a perfectly functional “bridge” ashore. The Grand Anse is not all that grand: We buy some postcards and return to make dinner on board. 

The sun sets at about 1730 hours and a relieving coolness sets in: sun protections is mandatory especially for the ladies who come directly from the winter far north.  An evening swim precedes evening activities, which include a variety of rhum cocktails…..

First day of stage 2 in this adventure.  Marion and Michaela arrive into Fort de France/ Martinique airport Lamatin tonight and I/the boat need to be there. So early morning at about 08.00 I leave the berth in Rodney Bay for Martinique, about 25 miles to the north.

To sail alone calls for proactivity and precaution, especially in the rather gusty trade winds.  So, always a life vest on, small sails which means a heavy reduced main which I set by pulling out the sail while braking the furling mechanism (the mainsail is old and worn and sacky and there is too much cloth mid mast, a fact that tends to jam it all).  I also use the cutter jib.  Reaching in 20-25 knot wind gives good speed.

The day is a bit hazy so basically you set out north towards an empty horizon.  Good sailing and after about an hour the contours of Martinique can be seen.  The course is slightly east of north and after about 3 hours I slip in passing the Diamond, a lonely rock on the south-easterly outskirts and continue up to la Rade the Fort de France. 

We need to go into the wind and I take down, or rather “in” the sails and motor up to the City.  Information from Rodney Bay suggests a basin in the centre of town.  The marina here turn out to be private and rather dilapidated.  Some boys in a dinghy suggest, however, another harbour/marina a but north and here I find a brand new and almost empty marina, Marina plaisance L’Etang de z’Abricots.  At 1500 hiours, with a little  help of marina attendants, I moor nicely here in very good protection, 5 km away from the airport.

…and at 20:30 Marion and Michaela appear  in the arrival exit.  It is nice to have company again.