The Passage of Time

We woke up in Newtown, Dominica to heavy rain.

It was pouring!! There was no wind at Newtown. It seems that in the shelter of the huge, lush mountains, the western side of these islands always stays completely calm. With a steady downpour this morning. Usually the heavy rain in the Caribbean only last a few minutes. This time it just kept raining and raining for the better part of an hour.

Today was our day to sail to Martinique. I was sad to leave Dominica, but we had more places to go! So gotta keep moving. But this weather today… Doesn’t seem great! Ugh. But if we don’t leave today then we’ll have two lousy days ahead which wouldn’t be good to leave either. Lets go, its not too far!

It was 7AM and the rain was crashing down with epic force. The boat was packed up and ready to move, and so we just waited. Eventually it subsided, let’s make our exit…

I was nervous. But oh well, I just hate going out into the ocean in rough weather so much. The general wind forecast said today was not TOO bad. So that’s always accurate, but the stormy rain can still get ya. Usually squalls at sea only last 5-10 minutes, and we’d definitely be seeing those today! But we’re going for it.

We motored through the calm, glassy ocean, under the mellow grey clouds. We slowly got farther and farther offshore as we headed directly for Scott’s Head rock. The Dominica passage between here and Martinique is notoriously rough. Of course, here in the wind shadow of Dominica everything is so still. It was a pleasant drive, I tried to just live in the moment, not fret about what might come on the other side of Scott’s Head. It too shall pass. Another puff of rain was floating off one big mountain in a cloud of white mist. It hit us and sprinkled for a little while as we motored. After that the overcast began to change. I saw some streaks of wild blue appear through the clouds, the sun began to shine dappled beams onto the green land, and other parts of the sky darkened ominously.

We came to Scott’s Head beneath the striking panorama of the sky. We got the sails up while still within the calm. Then as we continued, the wind began to blow, softly at first. I clenched my butthole with focus as we went into the ocean! I could feel my nerves pulling tight as the force of the sails tightened the rigging, as the Tradewinds began.

I’ve done this so many times but I just don’t seem to get used to it. In fact I’m getting worse! Dad is blissfully unaware of any strife of going into the ocean in stormy weather. Until we start getting soaked with spray from waves, and the boat starts to heel over a little too violently. Then he will become slightly tense, just slightly, temporarily. I mean, we have been through it all before, we’ve destroyed a boat at sea together, we’ve ripped sails, broken booms, hit reefs, snapped sheets, and frayed rigging cables! I guess it’s traumatizing me, but not Dad. We’ve never been accidentally swimming out there though, or in a life raft (my greatest fear).

Anyway, as we rounded Scott’s Head, the wind systematically picked up. The sargasso weed was back, floating in patches down current, down the waves. The waves grew steadily. We left Dominica behind and pretty soon the wind was too strong for the un-reefed jib to sail properly down our course. The pressure in the sails had us heeling over too much. In this case, there would be a few things we could do. We could reef the jib sail, (make it smaller) but actually we were still unable to do that, because of the chafing happening on our roller furling line. Due to that we had lost the capacity to reef the jib, because if we did, it would almost certainly snap this line the rest of the way, and then we’d have a hell of a time rolling up the jib again!

The other options- head more downwind and let out the sail. This takes pressure off, but we can’t do this, because we won’t hit Martinique! So finally, we can sail into the wind. Pinch it!! This also takes pressure off the rig. So that’s what I did. The waves were probably 5-6 feet high, the wind about 20 knots sustained, sargasso surrounded us and the sky was full of fearsome clouds of every shade of grey and black. But in the distance, the sky broke to vivid blue with bands of white cumulous. Lets go.

We crashed into the waves. It’s a bit taxing to sail like this, I get so focused I can’t take my hand off the wheel for even a second. Although when beating into the wind, Mary Jo will sail herself. So after I get used to the conditions then I can sit back and let Mary Jo partially take over. But if it’s too rough I have to correct her.

It was maybe a stressful 20 minutes, then it calmed down, then a bit of squall wind brought the tension back up as the wind increased by 5 knots or so. Looking at the sky I could see the wind. You can see patches of it from the color of the sky, the types of clouds and the darkness of the clouds. A little dark cloud would be off to the east and I knew when it passed over us the wind would increase. And when we clear the cloud, the wind will weaken. I could feel if the wind shifted direction even slightly, or slacked off or picked up. One with the boat. And we can see squalls coming long before they hit us.                 

The time when we were adjusting the sails in the fresh breeze off Scott’s Head passed, and soon Scott’s Head was farther away. I could see the phenomenal sea cliffs of the east coast of Dominica washed with spray, and the dagger-sharp mountains rising from them, darkened by the sky. I went through that hour there, and the time kept passing. Before long we were relaxed, chatting and having a good trip even though the sailing was a little extreme. And at some point the clouds changed again, the sky got lighter although the blue was still far away on the edges, but the wind got easier.

By that time we had covered 10 miles to windward! That’s great! Because we were beating into the wind, heading upwind of our course. Now we had done good! So we turned the boat. Headed downwind, and let the sail out. That makes the sailing much nicer, much calmer feeling, and much easier. Now we were having a great time, I wasn’t tense anymore at all. We had breakfast one at a time, of some nice curry rice and beans with veggies and hardboiled eggs that I had made ahead of time. Then Dad took over and sailed for a while.

A squall hit us with rain and moved us along fast. And Martinique slowly had appeared and come into view. The mountain on the north shore of Martinique is a massive volcano called Mt. Pelee. It was a very lovely cone shape, with jagged ridges coming down to the shore. Eventually we were close enough to see a long slope with wind turbines turning on the eastern side, and farmlands on the uneven land on the west.

After I was sailing again, I watched the sky around the mountain and to our east grow darker and darker. Oh god. Here we go, another squall. This was the big one!

It took a long time to build up. I was biting my nails again. Then we saw it and watched Mt. Pelee become consumed by white streaks of rain. The wind got stronger, and stronger, slowly. Maybe 1 knot stronger every minute, perfectly even as the squall approached. You just never know how strong it will get. And then when the rain starts and your in it, the wind is whipping the crests off the rapidly growing waves, and before long the fear goes away. Once your in it, then the anticipation is gone! The squall itself isn’t scary I guess, just the unknown of how you will handle it. They usually don’t last long, but they can do anything… I think a hurricane is just a really big squall. I didn’t handle this one so great, I let the sail out when it gained a monstrous amount of pressure, turned and ran with the storm. We surfed the waves, went VERY fast, twice as fast as we usually go, and the sailing was a little out of control. Just for ten minutes though. Then that moment too passed.

The squall ended as we reached the safety behind Mt. Pelee. It had gotten closer and closer until it was huge, and the summit was hidden behind clouds. Then the wind died completely. Silence and perfect stillness engulfed Mary Jo. Behind the mountain, in the lee of Martinique, just like in Dominica, there wasn’t an ounce of wind. Well maybe just an ounce! And so we didn’t turn on the engine just yet, and we slowly sailed along peacefully listening to music.

The late afternoon sky was marvelous, some parts were still dark with enormous cloud formations in the distance but we were under the blue now, and the sun shone powerfully. The land was lit up, a dense green rainforest. Somehow the villages and towns look like flowers in the green landscape, the colorful buildings red, pink and orange in the bright sun, cars zooming down a coastal highway, a bridge, a tall historic church. We passed by Le Precheur and went to make landfall at the city of Saint Pierre.

The sunshine vanished behind sudden clouds, changing the scene completely. Oh no, I’ve had enough of this! Let’s put the sails down and get motoring! We got the sails down right as the massive squall wind broke through the mountain’s calming effect, unleashing its fury on us. We casually motored through it, the seas continuing to stay relatively waveless. Then Martinique disappeared completely behind whiteout rain and we got thoroughly washed.

A new Martinique broke through, a much darker and more mysterious one with this bizarre weather at 3PM. The sun stayed hidden behind jet black clouds above the mountains and to the east, even as the western half of the sky was haunting hues of ice blue and indigo over the ocean’s horizon. And Saint Pierre looked so quaint! The volcano’s summit was visible now above the bustling French city. The countryside sprawled with patches of fields and agriculture on the hills in the background of the town, before hitting wilderness rainforest around Mt. Pelee. A volcanic rock tower thrust up in the middle of the farms somewhere, just for decoration. And Saint Pierre looked like an very beautiful and fun place to explore, with a dramatic canyon and bridge right in the middle of the town. A river poured through it.

We anchored in front of a long black sand beach in the evening. It was a great spot, the water was clean and deep blue. Our neighbor came and swam up to us with his snorkeling gear on! He was a very nice guy named Martin, and we invited him onboard. He was Dutch, maybe in his 40s or 50s, and it sounded like he had been traveling all over the world his whole life. Living in all kinds of exotic places, doing lots of surfing and sailing. He was super cool, gave us some info about Union Island, a place we planned to visit that I was very interested in. He had lived there before, and he said a lot of quirky people live there! I thought maybe it would a place I’d live as well, I could tell Union Island had been calling me! I thought it might be a place I could store the boat… When this trip is eventually complete and I don’t know when that will be…

But we were getting it done! We wouldn’t have time to go ashore at Saint Pierre unfortunately… That’s a shame it looks so cool. We had originally planned to explore it, but we decided to instead take an extra day in the city of Le Marin, Martinique. We would sail there tomorrow, that town has a lot of services and is a great place to re-stock a boat with delicious groceries that are imported from France. Martinique is actually a French state, if we were to get our passports stamped it would say France. However, we aren’t wasting our time with that nonsense.

Martin chatted possibly for a full hour, but he was in the middle of cleaning his boat bottom, so we jumped in the water at some point and helped him finish! He had a very sweet boat, the perfect size and looked so respectable! The sky stayed awesome all evening and gave us a glorious sunset.

We had a great morning, very relaxed. We pulled the anchor at 7:30 and headed out. No wind behind those big, green mountains, so we just motored along the sheltered coast in the calm water. I went really close to shore, to check out everything as we passed. We were following a highway that contoured the coast. Road trip!!

We did that for several hours and then we began to approach the capital city, Fort de France. The island of Martinique has a funny shape, the west coast of the island suddenly dips way to the east. This leaves a big, open bay, and then a peninsula juts out to the west, 10 miles distant. So it’s too far to follow the coast here, you have to head directly across the bay. But I didn’t realize that also in this area the mountains drop away to flat lands! The urban sprawl of Fort de France is built on those flat lands. And it’s much drier, it looked like St. Martin all of a sudden! And as the mountains vanished, so did the shelter from the Tradewinds. They suddenly appeared in full force. However, the waves of this bay were smaller than the open ocean.

I thought we’d have to motor all day from lack of wind, but here’s the wind! Ok then, off with the engine, up with the sails! And we began to just fly across the bay. We used only the jib sail, and it worked fabulously. The squalls kept coming one after the next, every 15 minutes or so, they were very small ones. Although still a little fearsome, but gave us no trouble.

Soon we were closing in on the huge peninsula on the opposite shore. This peninsula is where large, green, rainforest covered mountains rise once again from the flatlands. So we passed just offshore of those mountains, and the wind surely died again! Seems like they always block the wind.

Then the green peaks darkened in a small squall, and that gave us some wind. We kept sailing for a while in the fluky wind which came and went… The goal was to round this peninsula and then travel east-bound to the city of Le Marin. I sort of thought we would motor eastbound from here.

That wasn’t the case though! As we began to clear the mountainous peninsula, we were arriving at open ocean on it’s other side. A large rock called Diamond Rock stood dramatically offshore, the last vestiges of land, and 25 miles in the distance we could see St. Lucia. As the panorama came into view, the wind came right back. And the waves grew a bit bigger here. There was Le Marin, a peninsula of flat land that makes up the south end of Martinique, and it was hazy in the distance 10 miles to the east. The only problem is, east is where the Tradewinds always blows from.

Now that we felt the strong Tradewinds, and saw the big waves coming right at us from Le Marin we knew we had a problem! The course to get to Le Marin was way too direct east into the wind and waves… So it wouldn’t be practical to motor through these big waves, it would take forever. And to sail there we’d have to tack back and forth in a zig zag pattern. That would also take way longer than we had planned… It was 2PM.

Dad had the idea suddenly. Hey, instead of going to Le Marin, we could just go to this bay behind us here. This mountainous peninsula we were passing that jutted way out into the ocean, blocking a direct sailing route from the Fort de France area to Le Marin. This peninsula was really very beautiful, it had two or three different bays, with a few seaside towns we could make out from our vantage. There were other boats anchored, we checked the place out through binoculars and looked at the chart.

It’s called Anses D’Arlets, which is pronounced like “Anse Dar Lay.” We began to really dislike the French language! Because we obviously don’t speak it, (although I started to impress myself with how much I could say), and it is not spelled the way it’s pronounced at all. In Spanish things are usually spelled about the same way they are pronounced, but not in French! And all the words are kind of slurred together in French, everything about it makes it difficult for an American to learn!

So we decided, why not go here instead of Le Marin. I mean, Le Marin appealed to us because it had a lot of services, it would have some large grocery stores… but honestly all we needed was some basic groceries. So I’m sure this tourist town out here has something. We’ll make it work. I looked it up on Google maps and it appeared there were three towns, and three bays. Anses D’Arlets, Grand Anse and Petit Anse. It looked like there wasn’t much for grocery stores… There might be just one little one. Who knows, but I’m done sailing yeah, it’s too tough to get to Le Marin, maybe we could take a bus there tomorrow…

We turned the boat around and headed in to the bay. From here, the day after tomorrow, we can just head directly for St. Lucia.

The mountains were very welcoming, green and beautiful. There were quite a few boats in Anse D’Arlets, but didn’t seem to be too many people onboard. Although we could see people on jet skis along the sandy beach in front of town. The town looked small and pleasant, with a big concrete dock and a spacious waterfront. There was a historic church as well, and it’s bells chimed as we pulled into the bay.

When I dived in to check the anchor however, I realized that the entire seabed was rock hard! The whole place like a slab of concrete, impossible to sink the anchor in anywhere. The water was very clear and nice, and there was some dead coral reef and fish here and there. It looks like all the other boats around us are on moorings made of giant blocks sitting on the seafloor. Eh, oh well, I hooked the anchor on a rock and hoped for the best. We’ll have to move to a better anchorage tomorrow, try going over to the neighbor bay of Grand Anse. But this will have to do for tonight, I’m tired!

After nightfall though, we dinghyed into shore. I felt confident the boat was safe because there was no wind at all… But the shore was fairly far away. The dinghy motor crapped out on us in the middle of that trip, and we had forgotten the oars…! That was scary, oops! Drifting for a while in the dark in front of town. But we got it running again. We arrived by palm trees in the orange glow of streetlights at the deserted, seaside park by the church, a few pleasant people sitting around the concrete gazebos on the waterfront. We went out for dinner at a nice beachside, open air restaurant. We actually had to walk 20 or 30 minutes over to Grand Anse, there was only that one restaurant open in the whole area. Every other business of any kind was closed at 8PM it seemed. So far, this area felt like a very quiet, very peaceful place in the countryside.

After dinner we had very good French ice cream sundaes with espresso coffees. Wow, strong stuff, what a treat! It was a lovely walk back in the dark, on an empty sidewalk passed houses and fields, in the stillness of this nice place. We went back to Mary Jo and slept very good that night.