Unruly Night
It wasn’t a good night for me. The winds died down early and the boats turned lazy circles at anchor. The south swell didn’t go away. I had periods of calm, then waves slamming on the aft section and vibrating the boat, then corkscrewing for several minutes. Repeated all night. I can’t wait to sail from Martinique to Guadeloupe!
05:00 AM
I’d set my alarm but managed to wake at 04:59 and made a coffee. While it was filtering, I checked my e-mails, and at about 05:30, the sky started brightening and I got going. There was no wind for the first part of the trip, so I motored. The winds picked up a bit, so I motor-sailed.
I needed to keep up an average speed of just under 6 knots so that I’d arrive in the Iles des Saintes before sunset.
Martinique to Dominica
The passage between Martinique and Dominica is usually very windy and with big waves. Not today, so I had full sails out and despite that, used the engine to keep up speed. I had set the autopilot to steer a course directly to my ultimate destination at 330°, but once I was close to Dominica, the island looked wrong, and I checked the plotter – there was evidently a very strong west-to-east current that had shifted me too far to the east. Looking at my actual boat speed vs. speed through the water, it was a current of over 2 knots.
Once in the lee of Dominica, the wind died, and I furled the genoa to keep it from flapping about. There was still a bit of current against me, and my speed dropped dramatically. I didn’t want to use more engine, so I banked on making up for lost time on the passage between Dominica and the Saintes. The was an inshore wind for a third of the trip up Dominica, and I used that to eke out another knot of boat speed. The trip from Martinique to Guadeloupe was now looking marginal. If I got to the Saintes after dark, I planned on continuing overnight to Antigua.
Dominica to the Saintes
I knew that the winds funnel through Portsmouth, and there was a clearly visible demarcation line on the water between windstill and roaring. I set the sails with reefs and went from motoring at 5 knots to zipping along at 8-9 in a matter of seconds. From that point on it was a fast voyage and despite strong winds from Dominica to the Saintes there wasn’t a significant swell. It was champagne sailing for 20 miles.
I cut around the southern corner and furled my sails, heading to the pain de sucre. I saw that the mooring field was crowded, but I spied a single available mooring. So, I slowed down, ran forward to tie the 2 mooring lines, and proceeded to approach the mooring from downwind.
While I was doing this, a charter came around the corner at full speed and ignored my statelier approach and took the last remaining mooring. Rather than engage in an argument I’d surely lose (they certainly saw my intentions and chose to ignore etiquette), I anchored 60 feet outside of the mooring zone and on the other side of the underwater cable.
It was closing in on dusk, and I wanted to end my voyage before dark. After getting the unnecessary mooring lines coiled and stowed away, raising my anchor day shape, and putting the instruments to sleep, I opened up a cool Lorraine beer and celebrated a successful voyage from Martinique to Guadeloupe.
