The next morning we all raced out of Deshaies and on to Le Saintes in search of that wonderful Le Saintes Ice Cream. We arrived and all went in to town to enjoy ice cream cones, Sharon had a two doubles! Then we had everyone over to Reality to share tasty BBQ'ed Tuna. David and Heni enjoyed Le Saintes so much they decided to stay a couple more days. Reality and Nai'a continued on sailing 25 miles to Dominica. We spent the night and they continued on for another 50 miles to Martinique. Although we didn't get to spend any time in Dominica this time we still really enjoyed the island. The mountainous backdrop was spectacular as we sailed down the lee side of Dominica. We saw several pods of dolphins and a couple of whales! We arrived in Martinique and anchored off the town of St. Pierre. The following morning we continued on 15 miles down Martinique to the large city of Fort of France. The wind was blowing over 25 knots right on our nose. It was a slow, wet, slog to Fort of France. The anchorage at Fort of France was one of the worst we have ever anchored at. The wind was blowing straight into the anchorage and the wind waves were 2 to 3 feet. We decided to anchor just long enough to check into the country and to see if we could get our generator alternator fixed. The alternator is our major source of charging the boats batteries. It had crapped out several days before. We just barely got the anchor down in the choppy waves when this 20-foot skiff with three guys started circling Reality. At first we thought they were boat boys trying to sell us something so we waved them off. But they seemed to be insistent about pulling up along side. We kept trying to wave them away and kept asking what they wanted. Martinique is a French island so of course they only spoke French. They kept trying to tell us something, which we had no idea what they were saying. Dispite all our energy to wave them away they continued to try to come along side. They pulled up right next to Reality and handed Vaughn their bowline! The guys in the boat were trying to hold their boat a foot off of Reality. The waves were bouncing us both every which way. Within seconds of being along side their boat crashed into the side of Reality. That's when Sharon lost patience and started SCREAMING at the guys to get the F*** away. Sharon screamed at them a string of about 20 choice swear words in English of course. Vaughn dropped their line and told them to get the hell away! They must have understood English after all. They moved away from the boat but continued to circle us. We finally realized they were the customs officials and were there to check us into the country. We then tried communicating with lots of pointing and sign language. We got them to stay away from the Reality and let us put our dinghy in the water. Vaughn took the dinghy over to them. An hour later and with a little help from someone who spoke both French and English, we got all checked in. The custom boys even offered to file a claim against any damages caused by hitting us. We decided the scratches would polish out with a little rubbing compound and that it probably wasn't worth the possible bureaucratic nightmare of filing a claim against the French government. Besides we knew and maybe they knew that the language Sharon had addressed the customs officials earlier wasn't an appropriate way to speak to government officials. We thought it best just to get the heck out of Dodge!
We pulled anchor and headed across the bay to the lovely calm anchorage of Anse Mitan. We rented a car in Anse Mitan and spent the next several days touring the island. First stop was to drop the alternator off in Fort-of-France for repairs. We enjoy wandering around the town of Fort-of-France. It's a wonderful French Caribbean town with lots of beautiful old buildings and a wonderful spice market. The aroma as we strolled through the spice market was fabulously intoxicating. We then toured the north end of the island. The north end is very mountainous with lots of volcanic mountain peaks and dense rain forest. We enjoy hiking up a creek in the rain forest. The following day we toured the south side of the island. It is much drier, with small rolling hills and some beautiful beaches and bays. We returned to the rain forest for a beautiful afternoon hike. We ended the day by driving back to Fort-of-France to pick up our repaired alternator.
The follow day we hooked up the repaired alternator and were planning on leaving to continue on south. Well the alternator ran for all of about two minutes then crapped out again! Guess we were not going anywhere. As luck would have it, it was Saturday morning so we needed to wait around until Monday to take the alternator back to the repair guy. Oh, well Martinique certainly isn't a bad place to be stuck. We did a bunch more sight seeing. Monday the guy fixed the alternator for a second time. We installed it, it seems to work fine and we headed south to St. Lucia. St. Lucia is another beautiful island dramatically carved from volcanic peaks. We spent the first night in Marrigot Bay. The next day we headed south to the Pitons. The Pitons are two huge volcanic cones that rise steeply from the ocean to about 2500 ft. The backdrop they provide is absolutely picture perfect! A lovely palm tree lined white sand beach separates these huge pointed cones. It is gorgeous! We spent several days enjoying the view and snorkeling the steep cliff walls. Everything about the area was beautiful except our walk through the near by town. The towns' people were so aggressive to sell us something or give us a tour. One guy started talking to us telling us a little bit about the history of the town. Interesting facts like the island had changed hands 17 times between the French and English. But after a couple minutes of talking to us he wanted $40 US for his tour information! We told him we had never ask for a tour and thought he was sharing information to help educate people about his country. After lots of back and forth, and hearing about how he need money for his family. We agreed to give him $10. We got out of town as fast as we could and never set foot on shore again!
From St. Lucia we sailed past St. Vincent to Bequia. We had only planned to spend a few days in Bequia but wound up spending a week. Why, the alternator failed after only two days of use. This was after it had been fixed for the second time! We found a mechanic to fix it for the third time. We got it fixed in only one day but that fix only lasted a day! Did we have a lemon or what? When he went to fix it for the forth time he said it could not be repaired. It had a short and had completely burned itself up. We will never know if his repair caused the short or if we just got a bad alternator. The sad thing was the alternator was only six months old! We decided to wait until we came home for the summer to look into buying a new alternator.
Bequia is a neat little island. It has a huge well-protected bay with hundreds of boats anchored. The whole island economy is centered on providing services to all the yachts. People were extremely friendly and very helpful. We spread around a little business stocking up on vegetable from the local Rasta Boys. They had all kinds of wonderful fruits, vegetables and herbs. The waterfront is lined with all kinds of cute little restaurants and bars. The entire town is cute and clean as a whistle; flowers are growing in everyone's yards and all along the beach front and streets. It was a great spot to hang out. We would have our morning coffee and then go for a nice long swim to the beach. We would then walk the length of the beach and swim back to the boat. This retired life definitely beats working!
We left Bequia and had a nice quick sail to Canouwan. We decided to take advantage of all the beautiful dry weather and get caught up on some of our varnishing projects. We spent the day sanding the galley and nav station prepping everything for several coats of varnish. Wouldn't you know it, the next day we woke up to pouring rain! We hung in Canouwan several days finally managing to get our varnishing complete then headed onto Mayreau.
Mayreau is a beautiful little island. It had a couple of lovely anchorages. We enjoyed doing some nice snorkeling. We were pleasantly surprised to see lots and lots of fish. Mayreau has just one little village. The village people were all wonderfully friendly and warm. For a sleepy little island we were surprised to find several nice restaurants and really nicely developed beaches with lots of little palm thatched shade structures. We discovered why the place was so well build up. The next day a huge Cruise shipped pulled into the anchorage. The cruise ship dropped hundreds of people ashore turning the quiet beach village into a bustling tourist trap. We got away from the crowds by taking a walk around the island. It took us about 5 hours to circumnavigate the island. It was a lovely walk along deserted beaches following the trails of the fisherman. We stopped for lunch on a pretty little bluff with beautiful views of crystal clear Caribbean Sea. We finished our hike by stopping in for a soda at the hideaway exclusive Salt Whistle Bay Resort. The resort is on it's own little peninsula with only 8 private cabins. The buildings are all built in stone tucked up in the palm trees. The Resort restaurant was a trip. It had little private round tables surrounded by walls with bench seats all built from stone, covered with palm thatched roofs. You could almost make believe you were at the Mad Hatters Tea Party. Very private, exclusive and bazaar! We really enjoyed Mayrea!
We then hopped over to Tobago Cays. The Tobago Cays are a cluster of little tiny uninhabited islands surrounded by coral reefs. The setting is beautiful. The islands have tiny white sand beaches dotted with palm trees. The reefs surrounding the islands make the anchorage calm and turn the Caribbean Sea into a kaleidoscope of colors, every imaginable color of blue, purple and green. We spent days snorkeling and exploring the reefs. The snorkeling was some of the most spectacular we have ever seen. The variety of coral and fish were awesome. We saw all kinds of reef fish, sting rays, turtles, huge barracudas and even several reef sharks. One of the reef sharks was over 6 feet long…yeeks! We had a wonderful time! In addition to all the natural beauty, the place was very convenient. You could get anything you wanted delivery right to your boat. The local Rasta Boys were very, very nice people and quite the entrepreneurs. They had little boats they would come by daily bringing, fish, fruits, bread or what ever! One of the local Rasta Boys was an artist; he made jewelry from the local brown coral. Vaughn showed him his favorite brown coral dolphin necklace that he had gotten 7 years ago on a vacation in the Caribbean. It was getting badly worn, so he asked the artist if he could make him another one. Sure enough the very next day the guy had a beautifully finish dolphin even more perfect than the original! Got to love this place!
We really enjoyed the Grenadines. We appreciated having Reality, because the best way to really explore the Grenadines is from the water. We appreciated Reality even more when we found out all the hotel rooms in the Grenadines were at least $500 a night! The nice places were over $700 a night…WOW!