Dominica-Martinique-Dominica

Happy Easter everyone, we've had a couple of "busy" weeks, but not much internet, so we have some catching up to do!

We left Les Saintes and sailed a short run to Dominica, but we had left a little late in the day and didn't arrive at the anchorage until after dark.  Luckily, Pancho, one of the very helpful boat guys prevalent in Dominica (pronounced dom-in-EEK-a), guided us through the minefield of moorings and we were situated for the evening.  The next day we joined a nice retired couple from Montreal on a tour of the southern part of the island.  The taxi driver was very knowledgable and showed us several locations where they filmed the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  Along the way he was constantly pointing at fruit, cocoa, nutmeg trees.  He took us to Piton Gorge, but we elected to come back when the cruise ship crowds weren't in to see the narrow gorge.  We ran into our friend Rich from s/v Kelly Rae, another Pacific Seacraft 34' and made plans to meet up in Martinique.  Trafalgar falls was the highlight of the day, we enjoyed a swim in one of the pools and took in the awesome views.  That afternoon we checked in at the surprisingly diligent customs office and headed back to the boat.  

The next day we went diving with Jorge, who spent many years in Connecticut (!) but fell in love with Dominica and stayed.  He showed us Soufriere Pinnacles, a beautiful wall dive chock full of coral and sponges and lots of cleaner shrimps and a massive porcupine fish.  There was a very friendly turtle that actually came towards Kellee, usually the turtles swim the other way when they see you coming, but he sure was curious!  The second dive was just as impressive, and also had an old ship's cannon, and the end of the dive brought us to "Champane bubbles," actually a volcanic seep of hot gases - the area looks like a bunch of champane bubbles, and the water is pleasantly warm, almost like a jacuzzi!  We crashed hard that night and sailed the 35 miles to Martinique the next day.  The trip was quick, but the occasional wave would soak Chris at the helm while Kellee smartly huddled under the dodger.

We anchored in St. Pierre, Martinique, which became our home for the next 10 days.  We spent the first day running some errands in town and chilling on the boat, and had a yummy pizza and popcorn dinner aboard Kelly Rae (our first cruiser dinner!)  Kellee made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for dinner and we made plans with Rich to hike the next day.  We grabbed a bus (more like a 15 pass van with an aisle in the middle) and Chris managed to convince the driver (in French) to drive us off the normal route all the way to the trail head.

The hike up was akin to a never ending stairclimber, and we were fogged in for most of it, but once we got up to the caldera rim, the clouds cleared and the views were amazing.  This was Mount Pelee, the same volcano that erupted in 1902 and wiped out the town of St Pierre.  Once called the "Paris of the Caribbean," all residents of the town were incinerated along with the 12 ships in the harbor, now sitting on the bottom in 80 feet of water.  Several buildings in town used ruins from the eruption as part of their construction, giving the downtown a unique vibe.  Anyway, the mountain itself has a knife edge caldera rim that we were hiking on, and a dome that grew up inside the rim, making for startling scenery.  We opted to try a different trail down the mountain, and were graciously offered a ride at the trailhead by a young tourist couple from Paris, saving us a good six extra miles of walking back to town.  Rich came over that evening for some sextant comparing and shared a dinner of bbq chicken.

The next couple of days were low key, did some hull cleaning while dodging the occasional jellyfish and did a lot of reading.  Chris spent a lot of time working on his sextant training videos, both filming and editing.  The following day we took a crazy bus to Fort-de-France, the metropolis capital of Martinique, and checked out the marine store, local architecture and shops.  There is a library that was built in France and then transported brick by brick to Martinique and reassembled in FdF, so of course we had to check that out.  We walked through the mall, mostly to enjoy the air conditioning, and ate lunch at a roadside cafe.
In the last couple of weeks it's gotten noticably hotter, we're hoping not a sign of things to come.  Kellee will jump in the water just to cool off and stay in her bathing suit for the entire day!  We got back from FdF in a bus held together with ducktape and a prayer, just after customs had closed for Easter weekend (a four day affair in these parts).  So, we just puttered around the boat for most of the weekend.  We went ashore to do laundry and walk around checking out the ruins and of course getting more pastries.  There was a big farmer's market, so we walked through and picked up some spice mix for chicken and watched a guy lop the tops off of coconuts and funnel the water into recycled plastic bottles and selling it.

This morning we checked out of customs, stocked up on baguettes and pastries and set sail for Dominica.  It was a "sporty" transit, 8 foot seas and 25 knot winds, but Navigator handled it well and brought us across at a whopping 7 knots.  We are back on a mooring in Roseau at the southern end of the island and will head up to Portsmouth in a couple of days.  Portsmouth is better protected and closer to the airport.  We'll spend the week exploring this beautiful island and eagerly awaiting the arrival of our friend Heather.