Anika is here! So nice. I pick her up at the Martinique airport, a brand new and surprisingly large facility. There are no less than four or five daily nonstop flights from Paris. In general, Martinique is so much more developed, built up, much more western and feels much richer than the southern islands. I guess it helps to be a part of France.
Anika has just completed a major milestone toward her Bachelor Thesis and had lots of stress and very little sleep the last few weeks. But she slept a lot on the flight and is in surprisingly good shape. We grab a taxi and quickly make it back to JACE, who is anchored in a very cool spot right downtown Fort de France. It is dark when we get there but the view is still cool. This is Anika’s first time aboard and she enjoys exploring and getting to know the boat. We sit for quite a while in the cockpit and chat and she gets acclimatized to the balmy night air.
In the morning it is time for a first swim in Caribbean waters and a good hearty breakfast. We take our time and go to town for some groceries.
Then we do a bit of sailing, first to Trois Islets, which we don’t really like. To boot, I manage to do something I have managed to avoid for all my many years of sailing: I run aground! It’s an old adage among sailors, “it is not a question of if but when you will run aground”. Well, I have done it now and proven the saying right. Thankfully it was soft muddy ground and we just “kissed” the bottom briefly and then got back into deep water. So no harm done and no emergency. Puh!
After that we return to Anse Mitan, where I was two days ago and find a nice protected spot. For dinner the captain serves burgers on the BBQ with salad (I was a bit surprised Anika agreed so willingly to that meal plan!). After a gorgeous sunset we sit until almost midnight and talk. So nice to have company – and such special company at that!
We wake up on Monday to a cloudy and rainy sky. As always here it is fast progression of showers and sun, so rainbows are a frequent sight.
Today we have a slightly longer sail planned, wrapping around the southwester end of Martinique and then beating upwind all the way to the southeastern port of St.Anne, which will serve as a great jumping off point to head back south to St. Lucia.
But wind and weather don’t cooperate. It blows pretty steadily well over 20kn and despite the protection from the land there is quite some swell we have to beat into. And we encounter multiple rain squalls during which we not only get soaked but also hit with wind over 25kn. We sail under reefed main and just the small staysail and at times ask Rudy to give us a bit of extra push.
Anika just loves it, standing at the helm for hours, wet to her skin (despite the gray scenery it is still 27-28C warm), and not complaining in the slightest. I am more tired and done by the time we get there than she. Sailor girl!
By 3p we make it to our anchorage and the well deserved lunch. The afternoon is spent talking and Anika shows me her Bachelor project (concerning a fictitious international law case) and a bunch of other stuff from her recent university work. She has grown so much and I am duly impressed. So sweet to spend so much time with her.