Three weeks of sailing in Caribbean, April, 2008

by Quincy Ewing (qewing@verizon.net)

On April 6, Walter Thompson, a friend, and I flew down to Sint Maarten to join another friend, Harry Weber, on his Beneteau First 47.7, Crescendo, for a 3-week sail in the Caribbean. Harry had sailed down from Hampton, VA last Nov. in the Caribbean 1500. Harry was fresh off his 2nd place finish in the Heineken Cup Regatta Class 1 non-spinnaker division and was moored in Simson Bay waiting for us. This was sort of an encore trip as we did the same thing 2 years' back when we visited the BVI, St. Martin, Anguilla, and St. Kitts & Nevis.

After a day, we set sail South on an East wind for Dominica, passing Saba, Statia, and Guadeloupe on the way. This leg took about 21 hours as we averaged better than 7 knots. We found a very nice anchorage in St. Pierre Bay on the leeward side of the island. Dominica is an independent nation--a beautiful island, lush with parrots, bananas, and rain forest. The mountain heights of over 4,200 feet create a weather system that dumps 400 inches of rain per year on part of the island. Everything you can imagine is grown there--oranges, grapefruit, nutmeg and other herbs and spices, as well as mangoes, guava, and many more fruits. We stayed for several days before setting sail, still south, for Martinique. Dominica uses the Caribbean dollar, but American money is accepted everywhere. Bring lots of small American bills as whatever change you get will be in Caribbean dollars.

Martinique is a French possession, and to which I would not choose to return. While as beautiful as Dominica, we found the natives unwilling to help tourists out by speaking the simplest words of English. Martinique uses the Euro and the vast majority of places will not accept the U.S. dollar. Perhaps it is different in the largest town of Fort du France, but we were anchored in a bay in the shadow of the volcano that erupted in 1902, killing 30,000 people.

After several days, we continued South to St. Lucia, where we anchored in Rodney Bay. I had been to St. Lucia once before, and it is probably my favorite Caribbean island. St. Lucia gained its independence from Great Britain at about the same time as Dominica, and, like Dominica, they use the Caribbean dollar. Rodney Bay is where most of the resorts are, but Marigot Bay is much smaller and prettier. The people are friendly and helpful.

Again, we stayed several days before reaching for 2 days to return to St. Martin. A wonderful sail back! We had the good fortune to see a small whale, about 6-10 feet. It was swimming on the surface on the same course we were on, and was only about 20 yards away. We were sailing faster than it was swimming, and it paid us no mind.

We arrived back in St. Martin in time to get Crescendo's mainsail clew repaired. For this we had to remove the sail, bag it, and dinghy it to Quantum Sails, who did a nice job of repair. We also had to have a diesel mechanic come out to the boat to work on the genset. It seems that prior to our coming aboard, the water pump impeller had disentegrated, leaving the blades in the heat exchanger. It had been undependable on our sail, but worked fine after the mechanic managed to find and fish out the blades.

Walter remained on Crescendo to crew on the trip home to Galesville via Bermuda, while I flew home. My flight home almost was a disaster. The flight from St. Martin to San Juan, P.R. was delayed for 3 hours due to a mechanical problem, which caused everyone on board to miss his connecting flight out of San Juan. I was not looking forward to spending 24 hours in the San Juan airport. Fortunately, I was able to catch a late evening flight to BWI instead of to Dulles, arriving home about 3:30 a.m. American Airlines did upgrade my ticket to business class (no charge), so it was not all bad.



St Lucia tall ships

St Lucia Rodney Bay

St Lucia Fruit boat

Martinique

Martinique fishing

Martinique Cresendo

Dominican woman

Dominican mountain view

Dominian dog