Friday, November 22
Not quite halfway. I think we’ll hit halfway around sunset.
Haven’t seen the storm petrels in a couple of days, but the greater shearwaters are showing themselves in greater numbers even though the guide says they should be heading to Tristan da Cunha for breeding season. I wonder what that’s about.
That 1300-1400 watch was thrilling! This area is the opposite of an ocean desert. The shearwaters are still thick in the air and on the water, but there are also new fish showing up. A big tagged tuna, some dark reddish-brown sleek ones that I could only see inside tall waves, and the hull fishes–little yellowtails–our buddies that use us for shade and safety…they’re all living their big ol’ lives right here, right now. I imagine that the basis for the community is the ragged patches of sargassum.
James called a passing sailboat on the radio, and the most salient piece of information is that the forecast between here and the Leeward Islands is for at least 6 days of 18-20 knots from the ENE. The Leewards are a little north of Martinique but with a portion of that wind we’re back to 100 mile days and, depending on the sea state, the possibility of it being hard to do real cooking.
We have some leftovers lined up and tomorrow I’ll try to beat the weather with a big batch of smeaty bean dip. I did up a tomato sauce to mix into it and put on anything else that would taste good with chipotle sauce, garlic, cumin, etc.
Makes me nervy to have that information. We would have handled whatever came and I’m not sure knowing the forecast will do us any good. Well, it’ll probably make us more likely to reef early. That’s no bad thing.
Saturday, November 23
I’m pretty sure I’m going to push for going out of our way while on Martinique. You see, they have an Asian supermarket.
Aaahhhhh, I can hardly contain myself! I’ve run out of everything Thai, Chinese, and Japanese except soy sauce and a sweet and sour sauce that I got for James. Oh, and I’m not quite out of sesame oil. But all of the other basic cooking needs like rice wine vinegar and fish sauce plus all the sauce additions like miso and curry pastes plus staples like tofu…well, it’s been a long time since I had a good selection.
The problem is that we’re talking about a long bus ride. Or an expensive cab ride. Either way, it’s expensive in time/money.
In the same area, there’s a gonzo multistory one-stop-shop which sounds possibly useful except that we’d just have that much more stuff to schlep on the bus.
Martinique is having protests and demonstrations because the locals want better price protections. Groceries are as much as 40% more expensive than in France and I think they’re looking for an Azores-type situation where prices are regularized between the colonizers and the colonies.
This is good information because it means we don’t want to over-provision there. On the other hand, there are no Asian supermarkets in the Keys so…
What a beautiful morning! James woke me a bit before 0700 to spot him and hold the light while he pulled the second reef. It started sprinkling before he was quite done and I put the door in place (the one that covers the chartplotter, so we remove it altogether in good weather). I went back to bed and he says the sprinkling only lasted about a half hour.
The rain came on the heels of a wind increase so there was the possibility that we were looking at the new system the other sailor had told us about. Instead, the gusty, flukey wind steadied up about 5 knots faster than before…maybe 13-15 knots…and James put out the staysail rather than consider shaking a reef. It’s a good, tight, tidy one so I doubt we’ll shake it unless the wind drops quite a bit.
And the fish! James told me he saw one of the sawtooth-backed ones leap from the water and catch a flying fish in midair, setting off a riot among the birds. Just now, I saw that distinctive spiky back come out of the water in a jump and then slip back under only to jump again immediately.
I also saw a flying fish do a skidding landing that made a roostertail several feet long. Highly entertaining.
Noon position: N 15° 19.836’ W 043° 42.731’
Distance noon to noon: 91.2 NM
Average speed: 3.80 kn
Trip distance covered: 1137.7 NM
Distance to destination: 1004 NM
