To get to St Maarten, where the boat has to be taken out of the water for us to change the rudder bearings, we travel for several days. We leave from the northern end of Martinique where the township of St Pierre is still a pale shadow of what it used to be prior to the 1902 volcanic eruption of Mount Pelee, an event labelled by experts as ‘the worst volcanic disaster of the 20th Century’. The town is full of ruins and a small museum shows pictures from before the eruption, when it was the sophisticated, bustling capital of the island, also known as ‘little Paris’. The eruption devastated the town, killing an estimated 30,000 people, including almost all the French settlers on the island, as well as the entire island government. Only one man from within the town survived the disaster, the prisoner Louis-Auguste Cyparus, who was protected by the thick walls of his dungeon. Two other people located on the outskirts of town survived, the remainder were burned alive and buried in the ruins. Several ships were anchored in the bay, all of which are now shipwrecks, making popular dive sites for the few visitors to the town.
From St Pierre, we sail past Dominica and onto Guadeloupe, where we stay at Les Saintes for a night, spotting a beautiful five masted pirate ship on our approach. After a pleasant morning there, we take off again and head for mainland Guadeloupe, where we anchor at Pointe-a-Pitre. A friendly dolphin meets us at the harbour entrance and escorts us to our anchorage, turning side on to get a good look at the excited children who lie face down on the trampoline, mesh imprints on their cheeks. Our plan is to take a shortcut and go through the Rivière Salée which separates the two bulbous parts of the island, Grande Terre and Basse Terre. Only once we get there we realise that the river is closed for bridge traffic, the bridges permanently down. That will teach us to check ahead of time – although only really a detour of about 50 miles, it will cost us the better part of a day to make it up. It is hard to explain to the children how slow we really are travelling – less distance than from Raglan to Hamilton return will take eight hours on a windless day. Still, it is nice to revisit Pointe-a-Pitre, which is the place where we first met, 23 years ago.
So it’s up early the next morning, and back south again to round Basse Terre. On the way we meet a boatful of naked Germans in distress – they have caught their rudder on a lobster pot, and we hover at a discreet distance, conversing with them via radio, until we are satisfied that they have it sorted and don’t need our help.
North of Guadeloupe we pass on the leeward side of Montserrat, another island with a history of volcanic disaster. When the Sourfriere Hills volcano became active in 1995, a large proportion of the island’s population fled. The volcano is still active, and a volcanic exclusion zone is shown on the charts; we give it a wide berth.
Night falls somewhere north of Montserrat, and we start night watches. David does the early shift from 8 to midnight while I sleep, and then I do midnight to 4:30, after which he gets up and does the sunrise shift. In terms of our bodyclocks we are either a great or a terrible match, depending on how you look at it. Great for night watches on boats, where we complement each other well: I can go to bed any time after 8 pm and am fresh straight away in the early morning, whereas David is at his best late at night, and is terribly grumpy first thing in the morning. Not fantastic for our busy daily life at home, where he is at his worst when we briefly meet before work in the morning, and I am tired and fading fast after work at night. On a boat it is perfect, though, because we get to do our respective watches at night, and interact when we’re both peaking round the middle of the day.
On this particular night we are showered in shooting stars, saturating us with wishes. The ocean sighs and heaves, groans and creaks, splashes and bangs. I look for whales in case they’re the cause of all the sighing, but can’t see any. The water is deep, and it is strange to think of the creatures underneath, sleeping, gliding through the depths, as we sail on the surface. There is not much to do on night watch: I scan the dark horizon for objects, vessels, check the radar to see if it has picked up anything, check the sails, the wind, the depth. After that I have a cup of tea and a snack, and then start the checking all over again. I’m reading ‘War of the Worlds’ by H. G. Wells, in which strange lights from the universe turned into malevolent Martians which wreak havoc on Earth. Hopefully the shooting stars I’m seeing are just a meteor shower.
Once I get my night vision in, lights are everywhere. As we make our way north, faint glows on the horizon turn into brightly lit islands. Glittery cruise ships speed past, lit up like Christmas trees. Lighthouses blink steadily. All this activity is matched in the sky above, where we are headed straight into the big dipper, a giant question mark in the sky suspended over where we’ll end up tomorrow. Even the toilet bowl is alight with bioluminescence; I never knew it could be this fun to flush.
The children are adapting well to the passage, making up games as they go along. Matias writes endless letters to Santa, which David dutifully responds to at night, weaving a tangled web of present-bearing minions, some of which are boobies (seabirds) and some of which are invisible. We log plastics, they tie knots on ropes, making a maze to block the passageway from the cockpit to the saloon. We play a few games, cards, dominoes. They play with Lego, do some homeschooling, have a knot tying lesson with David. Slightly worryingly, one of Lukie’s Lego creation is a boy imprisoned on a boat, the minifigure chained to the top of what he explains is a slave ship. We decide not to read too much into it…
SV Bob The Cat 