Portsmouth to Fort de France

Hi everyone,

Yesterday at dawn we arrived in Fort de France, Martinique after a good overnight passage from Portsmouth, Dominica.  It was a passage of three parts - the lee of Dominica, the Dominica Channel and the lee of Martinique.

Approaching Fort de France at dawn

Yet again we were in company with Cerulean.  We departed together and we arrived a few hours ahead of them.  That was due to the affects of the lees of both Dominica and Martinique.  Unlike on previous occasions we left Cerulean to make their way through the lulls and we motored.  We motored for a total of 4 hours during the 15 hour passage, which equates very well to the difference in Cerulean's and our passage times.

The route was 67nm, our track 68nm and the log 72nm.  As the figures suggest we had current against us, particularly in the channel.  Sailing through the lee of high islands is challenging.  At times our boat speed fell below 1 knot and when we lost steerage way the engine went on.  So we had some fun light air sailing with a blast in the middle when we had 20-25 knots on the beam and we shot across the Dominica Channel under trisail sized main and triple furled yankee.

Here are our track and graphs...

Overall Track

Arrival Track

Graphs

The graphs clearly show the difference between boat speed and speed over the ground in the Channel, and the ups and downs of speeds in the island lees.

Anchored off Fort de France

After Cerulean arrived we went ashore together to clear-in at the local chandlery opposite the Leader Price supermarket.  That's perhaps 300m from the dinghy 'dock' at the anchorage.  Arriving and going ashore in Martinique is quite a culture shock after nearly a month in Guadeloupe and Dominica.  Here there are modern bus networks, dual carriageways and shopping malls in abundance.

You may notice our PredictWind tracking page is no longer updating our position.  That's because we've stopped our IridiumGo! air-time plan and so are no longer feeding hourly positions.  You can now see our location when we're in harbour here on NoForeignLand.

Trust all's well where you are!