Martinique

Martinique 15.Dec.2007

Finally 2 days ago, we had land in sight, St. Lucia. Eastern Caribbean. It was a really fast crossing, record for this ship! 13 days (actually only 12days and 14hours!!!) under sail alone, not a single engine hour! Many Nice!
We dropped our anchor in Rodney Bay, in the middle of the night, so I was sleeping and didn’t see land until early the next morning, but it felt so nice to get up on deck, look around and see green mountains, turquoise water and sandy beaches… it wasn’t like arriving in paradise, but still it felt really good! We worked hard all day, putting boats in the water (our sloop and the Rib) preparing swim stairs and all those things that in a few days will be standard procedure every single day!!! So eh next time we have to be able to do it in less than half the time, yesterday it took us approx. 6hours, the coming weeks we should be able to do it in no more than maximum 2!!!
But eh everybody was a “bit” loony, behaving really silly and talking a lot of blahblah, it was a good day though and finally we cold sit down easily and enjoy our food, without it coming flying trough the longroom! I’ve been waiting for that, for what seems like a loooong time, but actually it was only for 2 weeks! My watch got the afternoon off, so at 15.30 we left the ship and 20minutes later I grass between my toes! How that feels after 2 weeks off only water, water, water, water is difficult to describe, even though this crossing was very short, it still feels…
Wow have to continue later, gotta get some sleep, I’m the lucky winner of the watch tonight, so I’ll be the designated sloop driver, making sure people get safely ashore and back to the ship later on, completely wasted, and most probably very annoying, loud and misbehaving… just like we’ve been the last couple of days, so eh I can’t complain, really! Oh here goes the anchor… now we are in Martinique…!!! Oh well I’ll hopefully have time to finish this later…

It’s now later, I still want to finish this, but eh I’ve sailing the sloop, for the past 4hours, it’s now 00:36 and I’m absolutely nacket! (Wonder how to spell that?) Oh well not know! I’m soaking wet too, ‘cause we had a squall, luckily no wind, just rain, lots of rain! It felt like taking a shower, the sky just cracked open for about 7min and since we where sailing the sloop, we couldn’t seek shelter! Squalls are so unpredictable, we had one earlier sailing from St. Lucia (first port of call in “tha Caribbean) it lasted for about 20 minutes and came with not only rain but also 40knots of wind… crazy but very good! I went out last night, so it was a rough wake up call, about 4hours after I got out of bed! I wasn’t really awake when it happened, but I surely was afterwards!
The funny thing about squalls is that they usually come without a warning, of course we can spot them on the radar, but sometimes they catch you by surprise. So in a squall we often have to act fast! Really fast, take sails away, preferably before they hit you! But hey that’s all part of the fun of sailing. It was a good day today, my AB (Able Body sailor, who’s the second in command after me in the watch (I’m obviously second in command after the mates, who’s after the captain, which pretty much ranks me and “my” AB pretty low in the hieraki)) is a happy unit, and thinks I’m the coolest Quartermaster around, all because I let him do the manoeuvring… easy “good-will” points, but very nice!
Oh mymymy time is passing so quickly… it’s now 00:56 I think it’s about time to get out of my wet clothes, hit my bunk, and hides under my nice feather duvet and dream sweet dreams!