St. Pierre episode 6
Thursday 12th - Saturday 14th December 2024
We spent some time thinking about our trips to St. Pierre and have come to the conclusion that this is our sixth visit to the town.
The first order of business on Thursday was to check all the forecasts. A strange combination of lows, fronts, impulses and Chris Parker only knows what, are resulting in a collapse of the trade winds. So we were trying to decide if we should make the passage to Dominica on Friday when there would be no wind (less than 5 knots) or wait until Saturday when there should be a bit of wind (possibly not enough do much sailing) but also more squalls. We have settled on traveling on Saturday. Keeping our fingers crossed for more rather than less wind.
A somewhat unexpected outcome of the diminishing trade winds was a lot of sideways rolling on the boat. After a few hours we got our water delivery ( a new fabulous feature of St. Pierre - 250 liters of water for 6 Euro, directly delivered to your vessel). The rocking was taking its toll, we felt we had to go to shore. Unfortunately, a large cruise ship had anchored off St. Pierre. One whole side of the dock was blocked by their “transport pods”. This caused absolute pandemonium on the other side of the dock. Dinghies were thick as fleas on a cat. Our plan was to walk along to the area where Mike had seen fishermen selling tuna, whilst on his way back from Mt. Pelee. We found the fish “stall” and bought some wahoo and some blue-fin tuna. A trip to the Super U yielded some ice. Mike returned to the boat with fish and ice while I attempted to wait in the shade. We then made our way to a restaurant for a much delayed lunch. (Grilled Mahi Mahi and smoked chicken - both excellent!) An excursion to the bakery got us some bread and a few pastries! Are we all about food or what?
After a couple more hot hours rolling on the boat, we set out to meet our friends Paul and Tracy, from Magic Pelagic, on the dock. The plan was to walk up to the statue of the Virgin Mary on the cliff top to watch the sunset and take some photos of the town as darkness fell. Both Mike and I found the walk a lot easier than when we had trudged up there previously. As we walked back downhill in the dark, we noted lots of fireflies among the trees at the side of the road. This brought back memories from my childhood. As I recall it, fireflies were pretty common in Maine when I was a kid. It seems quite a long time since I’ve seen them in numbers. The whole experience of walking around on land after dark seemed quite unusual, also. We haven’t done much of that in the month we’ve been back on the boat. Our friends came back to Cotinga for a drink. It was fun to chat with them and hear about their experiences and plans.
Friday, we awoke to more rolling and very little wind, once again. We went ashore to check out and spent a lot of time hanging around the harbor master’s office waiting for the Capitainaire to show up. Mike undertook multiple missions while I sat with our check out form and payment. By noon we were disheartened and all our shopping had been completed. We decided to return to the boat with our purchases and have some lunch. Maybe we’d have more luck locating the harbormaster during the afternoon hours. As it happened, we saw his boat out in the mooring field. He assured us that he was returning to the office “now”. We unpacked and stowed our shopping on Cotinga. We could still see the chap tying up his boat to the mooring. Mike headed back to the office and was able to complete the check-out and pay for the extra night of mooring.
Mike is now starting preparations for the passage tomorrow. His first step is rigging up hooks for our bait fish. We will have many other jobs to do but I suspect none that he will enjoy quite so much. Maybe the fishing gods will smile on us!
Gloria
The fishing gods did not smile on us, but the weather gods did. We left St. Pierre at 6.20 am expecting to motor the entire 53 nautical miles to Portsmouth, Dominica. However, once we cleared the northern tip of Martinique we had a good breeze of 13-15 knots at angle of ~120 degrees, with fairly flat seas. Consequently we enjoyed a delightful sail between the islands and only had to start motoring again when we got into the lee of Dominica. My thoughts on the fishing … I read that the predatory fish are more active in the early morning and late afternoon because they can see the bait fish better. Maybe they are down deeper during the day, and we struggle to get much depth on our lures. We tried three options - whole mackerel dead-bait, wooden plug and fancy plastic squid thing. No joy on any of them. Anyway we picked up a mooring off the beach around 3 pm and were rewarded by the arrival of a dolphin off the bow, that stayed around for a minute or two slapping the water with it’s tail. We also saw multiple turtles. After a cool-down swim and some dinner it was time for an early night.
Mike
15 34.872 N, 61 27.807 W
A closer view of the summit of Mt Pelee ... once again, clear in the evening.
What a bonus, a lovely sail when you were led to believe it could be otherwise. The sail up there looked fab!
ReplyDeleteAlso, with regard to the cute cat and feeding……. I am definitely of the ‘not feeding’ persuasion. I had one begging next to me for my fish meal on our last night in Martinique, much to the amusement of the other customers. It got absolutely nothing! Jo