A Tale of Two Chemists: Ship Floats Off!

Ship Floats Off!

Tuesday 23rd - Wednesday 24th April 2024

We left Saint Pierre on Tuesday morning and motor-sailed over to Anse Noir, a tiny bay about 5 miles south of Fort-de-France. I expected it to be a lazy, light wind sail, behind the lee of Martinique, but it turned out to be quite fierce with winds of up to 22 knots. We had a single reef in the main sail to ensure that we didn’t further damage the ripped seam. Snorkeling in Anse Noir was okay, but not brilliant. We saw a few interesting fish and some coral, but we suspect that extensive coastal fishing has had a profound detrimental effect on fish stocks. Once back aboard Cotinga we opted to pull up the anchor and head about 3 miles down the coast to Anse Chaudiere, which is a bigger anchorage, and offered the potential of a more relaxed night.

The evening started off wonderfully with “Painkillers”, a Caribbean classic with rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, creme of coconut, all topped with dash of nutmeg. Dinner was a Chinese noodle soup dish, eaten outside in the cockpit … and very tasty! By boaters midnight (9am) we were all ready to hit the sack. I’d like to say we all slept soundly, but that would be a lie! For some reason the swell picked up in the early evening and around 11 pm I woke up with the boat rolling and the anchor snubber ( a line attaching the boat to the anchor chain) creaking and groaning. This presented a dilemma. If I put in my ear plugs then if we dragged, I wouldn’t hear the anchor alarm from our chart plotter. But if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to sleep because of the motion and noise. In the end I decided to get up, check our situation and set up a separate anchor alarm using a new App on my iPhone, and sleep in the main cabin. Our track on the chart plotter looked like a ball of wool … all over the place … but no evidence we were actually dragging. I put in ear-plugs, reasoning that I was physically closer to the chart plotter and might hear it should the alarm go off, and failing that maybe I’d hear the untested iPhone anchor alarm. Needless to say it wasn’t the greatest night of sleep. In the morning we were having coffee when my phone started sounding a warning. The Anchor Alarm was going off with a reassuring loud tone. We weren’t actually dragging, we just had 80 feet of chain out and the 46 foot length of the boat, with an alarm radius of 30 meters, and had simply drifted out of the zone that I set. When I looked at my phone it had a striking message for us … “Ship Floats off!” (See photo below).

Today we took the Dainty Dog into the town dock at Les Anses D’ Arlet and then hiked over the hill to the adjacent beach town of Grande Anse. It was a very hot walk and when we saw a waitress at a beachfront restaurant carrying out large glasses of cold beer, all self control evaporated. We had a fabulous lunch of fried Marlin or Snapper with French fries and salad, complemented by some excellent “pression” (draft) beer. The walk back over the hill was equally hot, but somewhat hazy in my mind!

The dinghy is now up on the foredeck, ready for the passage tomorrow to Saint Lucia. Around 5 pm we had a cool down swim and a shower, then spent a couple of lazy hours sitting outside in the cockpit. It has been so humid the last several days that the sun disappears behind a wall of moisture and the sunsets have been a complete bust. Things are supposed to dry out a little over the weekend.

Mike

14 28.873 N, 61 04.826 W