Martinique

Saturday we arrived in Martinique and anchored in Ste. Pierre. This was the capital till 1902 when Mount Pelée erupted and nearly killed everyone in town. They did a nice job mixing the ruins with new buildings, very nice town. There was nobody in the weekend to check-in so we sailed yesterday to Fort de France, that lies in a big bay and we went to Anse Mitand to anchor and will do the whole immigration thing here.

Dominica is a very beautiful island, has seven active volcanoes, very friendly people. We were there way too short, so we now definitely have decided to do this part of the trip next year again and wait with the ABC islands. We met here a very nice Dutch couple and had two evenings talking about everything. They are doing the Atlantic circle and will be back in Holland in October.

In Dominica we had internet on the boat and Jacques could Skype to Verizon to sort out our cell phone problems. It now works again and we can use the phone although the roaming fees are very high. We also can send and receive E-mails from our phones again.

During the passages I sometimes like to play a little bit the ostrich game, if I do not look at the waves, they will not be that high!!!!!!!! We had two reefs in the mainsail and the sailing from Dominica to Martinique was great, we went 7+ knots with 12 ft. waves and Lady Hawk is handling herself pretty good, we are proud of her.

Today we go to a quiet bay called Pte. Anse d’Arlets. It is only 7 miles so we wait until the rain has stopped. After that we plan to go to Le Marin which is the capitol of sailing in Martinique. We hope to have Wi-Fi there so that we can Skype. It looks that the weather calms down on Wednesday and Thursday when we will cross over to St. Lucia and hope to find nice places where we can go when Tom and Laura and the kids are visiting us.

This blog entry is a little bit of going back and forth between now and Dominica, but you all will be able to get the message. 

Have a nice Valentine’s day, Ria.