Friday, April 6, 2012

Sailing time

Friday, February 17th.

This is funny, last Friday I was working out to fit in my party dress. But it feels like we've been gone for a month! The Captain feels the same way, specially after the road trip in Dominica.

We woke up at six and started our journey to a different place, St. Pierre, Martinique, 62 miles away. It was a perfect day for sailing. This time I was the one talking to my brain, instead of my stomach, so I could enjoy having cereal and a decent lunch. I was even able to cooperate with Captain Rumfelt, easing and harding the genoa sheet, coiling them and pulling fishing lines. By the way, our rêve (*) of catching a Mahi-mahi didn't come true. There was a lot of sea grass along getting on the lines and hooks.

We got to Martinique just in time to enjoy the sunset, but we didn't anchored in St. Pierre until eight. My first impression of this town, devastated by a volcano in 1902, was arriving to one of the European towns I've just seen in a movie.

St. Pierre used to be the Capital of Martinique. It was known as the Paris of the Caribbean and was the commercial, cultural and social center of the island, with a population of 30,000 people. After the explosion of Mt. Pelèe, the volcano, called Ascension Day, the 8th of May in 1902, there were only 2 survivors in the town; Loen Leandre, a cobbles who was in his cellar and the famous Cyparis, imprisoned for murder, in a stone cell. St. Pierre was never rebuilt to be the same, and some of the survivals walls can be seen as part of a new house (*).

Now the Capital is Fort the France, which is our next stop.

Learning how to garden on a sailboat,

AnechyNotes

(*) dream or wish in French
(*) Extract from 2005-2006 Sailors guide by Chris Doyle

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