I suspect that this is the calm before the storm. The anchorage is beautiful this morning, not a hint of wind and I can hear the little wavelets roll ashore on the beach. The weather shows strong trade winds on the windward side of the island, but Martinique is so large and high that those winds get blocked here.
One of the weather models now show the centre of this system to be rotating with about 60MPH winds and passing over Dominica just to the north of here. That’s a bit close for comfort and I am thinking of departing on Monday and heading south; either to St. Lucia or perhaps even further to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
I’ll be keeping a close watch on the weather during the course of the day. I will go shopping in any case, since this might be my last chance at getting affordable quality groceries. At least the dinghy ride is easy during the calm before the storm.
I was surprised to hear the familiar exhortations of a fitness club drill sergeant urging to more effort, and had to go on deck to search for the source. It turns out that there was a water aerobics class in session a hundred yards away on the beach and it was so quiet that I could hear it out here. Needless to say, it didn’t work in getting me to start doing any exercise at all.
Maintenance
In the mid-morning I finally got away from the computer and did some of accumulated chores. First on the list was doing my dishes. I had done a quick rinse after using my plates and putting them in the sink. But they’ve accumulated over the week and I’ve been pouring coffee and other stuff around them. So they were filthy and needed extra scrubbing. But once washed and dried and put away I was on a roll.
Next was to access the hot-water supply going past the washing machine. That had been the cause of my slow water leak months before and it seems that it has loosened once again. I got the John Guest Speedfit fittings out and took them apart to clean them thoroughly. There was a bit of discoloration from traces of rust, but otherwise they seemed to be in order. A bit of cleaning the pipe ends and I put it all back together. There seems to be no dripping anymore, but I’ll wait a couple of hours to see.
I’ve returned to the computer to write this, but think that while I’ve overcome my internal inertia I’ll put the generator housing back together.
The generator was a messy job, because there was fine soot everywhere from when I’d attempted to start the generator with all of the housing parts removed. This meant that back-blast from the misfiring cylinders was puffing soot back instead of forward.
Ashore
I wanted to get some mince for Bolognese sauce (and some more Caribe) so I went ashore in the late afternoon. Almost everything was shut down, but I did find a laundromat which I might visit tomorrow and saw part of the St. Pierre that I’d not visited before.
Mount Pelée erupted in 1902 and devastated St. Pierre, which had been a thriving city. Over 30,000 people lost their lives and only 2 people survived in St. Pierre, one of them a prisoner in a windowless underground cell. There are still some remains visible in the city. It has never recovered to it’s former prominence and the southern part of the island now has the big cities as population and industrial centres.
Back Aboard
The freshly purchased Caribe is chilling in the freezer and I took a nap in the cockpit while waiting for it to reach an appropriate temperature. I’m undecided about dinner; I could cook something or use what is left of my salami and Edamer cheese on top of my freshly purchased baguette. I suspect I’ll do the latter and make a cold dinner tonight. This calm before the storm is a bit unsettling, even though there’s still a week to wait before it arrives.
I ended up making a baguette sandwich and enjoying a cold beer in the cockpit.
