A dream passage!

If a couple of newbies wanted to know what passage making was really like, it would have been entirely misleading for us to have had them along with us on our overnight sail from Carriacou to Martinique. Why do I say that? Because it was just too good. The fact is, passage making in the Caribbean just isn’t like that 99% of the time.

To start off, we had a great sail up to Carriacou with our friend Dirk, who was single-handing his 36′ Pearson ketch, Evening Ebb. We seldom travel with other boats so it was a fun change to sail side by side, snapping photos of each other. When we arrived in Carriacou around mid-afternoon, Rebecca and I visited the customs office in Tyrell Bay to clear out in preparation for our trip to Martinique. That was our first time using the new Tyrell Bay customs office and I have to say, it was pretty convenient. The three of us then did what you would expect, we found a nice bar/restaurant to celebrate our landfall. While always enjoyable, what made the celebration extra special was being surprised by a couple of sailors offering us a round of drinks! John and Lorela, sailing on a Leopard catamaran called Imagination, apparently follow our blog, and just happened to be in the area. After joining us for drinks and dinner, which they treated us to by the way (we are so appreciative!), we had a fun time chatting about their travels, and sharing local knowledge about Grenada, their next intended landfall.

The following day Rebecca and I awoke early to make ready for a 7:30 AM departure. With light winds forecast, we started to fear that we’d end up having to motor most of the way to Le Marin. As it turned out though, there was just enough wind to sail along at 5-6 knots most of the way (excluding when we were in the true lee of St. Vincent and St. Lucia). In addition to that, there were virtually no waves! That’s right… we experienced decent wind, calm seas, sunny skies, no rain, and beautiful stars and moonlight. In other words, it was perfect! So perfect in fact, if we didn’t have a mystery light illuminate on our engine panel while motoring in the shelter of St. Lucia, forcing us to slow down and jump through a bunch of hoops trying to figure out what was the issue (loose connection on an alternator, we think), I would have thought that we dreamed the entire thing!