ON THE WAY TO ANTIGUA

After staying in St Anne, Martinique for almost two months, we thought moving a little would do us good. Everybody was raving about Antigua, which we had skipped while coming down from BVI four years ago.  Antigua is almost accross the sea to the North east of Montserrat, which we had favoured at that time (and for good reason, it was amazing!).

Anyway, we decided to spend the month of March around Antigua, taking our time going up and down, after which, it would be closing the season in and around Grenada. It is incredible how fast this year is going.

As always we watched the weather, which had been very stormy and wet for the last two months (where is the dry season?), but the weather started to calm down for about a week starting on the 27th of February, so we weighed anchor that day from St Anne at 7:00 am towards St Pierre, the North west corner of Martinique.

Selecting a mild weather to sail is contra-intuitive one can say, which forces one to turn on the engines to beat the waves. Even on the first portion of the way going directly west to the Diamond rock, the wind was not strong enough to push us through, despite having sails wing-on-wing. However, we reached our destination
around noon, thanks to our Volvo s.

The passage to Dominica was likewise light on the winds, but with high seas, which again compelled us to use the engines some of the way. Boo!

There was not much change in Rousseau, Dominica, except that Pancho is no more. According to SeaCat (the Greg and Beanie duo), maintaining mooring balls required one to dive, and Pancho was more into land affairs than swimming lately. We had a nice chat with Beanie instead.

Portsmouth (anchorage at the North west of Dominica) was likewise unchanged, but we detected fewer boat-boys, but more professional service from  PAYS (the co-operative that maintain and protect the mooring balls). Cobra is likewise seemed to be into bigger things (good for him).

Passage to Guadaloupe was also luck-lustre and tedious with mild wind/high seas. When we reached Rivere Sens, at the  South west corner of Guadaloupe, we were quite tired from the constant beating of the waves from 90 degrees.