Despite only marginally better weather for the trip, we decided to do the passage today, as postponing by one more day would make this portion of the holiday planning unfeasible, as they had to return to Germany on Friday. So early in the morning I went ashore for bread (no delivery to the boat due to Easter holiday) and to clear out of France. The office opened a bit later but I was back aboard before 9am and by 11 we were ready to go but I wanted a bit more time to let the winds calm down, according to the weather reports it would go from 23kn to 19kn at around this time, but the waves remained high at 2.6m
We finally departed and set the 3rd reef in the genoa and a bit more reefing for the main and once clear of the Î les des Saintes found that the wind and seas were just as the weather forecasts had prognosticated. The seas were rough with most waves capped by white foam and the winds were pushing the seas along ever faster. We could just barely hold our course for Dominica but we’d put in sufficient reefs to push us along at 6 to 7 knots. We’d prepared garbage-bag lined buckets and my guests had taken some medication and Sophia was put to sleep immediately and somehow managed to glue herself to a cushion and not budge regardless of boat heel. Silvia and Barbara weren’t feeling their best but Wolfgang was doing all the work and was doing just fine.
Apart from seeing myriads of flying fish on the way we did have a short glimpse of 2 large dolphins next to the boat but the whale sighting eluded us. Once in the wind and wave shelter of the northern coast of Dominica conditions got better and while still over a mile from the anchorage we were approached by the first boat-boy in a wooden dinghy. I’d gotten a reference from Bruce of Sold the Farm to use Alexis so was prepared to shoo off the visitor but saw that serendipitously it was Alexis who’d come out; we shouted that he’d come by after we anchored and that was all the trouble we had.
Anchoring took a bit longer, since the remote hadn’t worked and I’d only let out 5 feet of chain instead of the 80+ feet that I thought; the anchor remote read “sensor error”; but when I went forward I could use the remote attached directly to the windlass and we anchored in about 40 feet and I estimated that I’d dropped about 150 feet of chain when we finished. Then we settled down a bit from the passage and started putting the boat to sleep. Alexis dropped by but stated that he had a late river tour and would be back, we took a swim and set up the sunscreen and had our happy hour libation and before we knew it, it was dark and we’d finished dinner. Alexis came by and we arranged an early-morning river tour with him so that we could sail back to the Saintes in the afternoon.
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