St. Lucia, BWI to St. Martin, FWI

Today we left St. Lucia, BWI on a passage of 280nm to St. Martin, FWI. After enjoying the completion of our trans-Atlantic crossing and all festivities at the conclusion of the ARC we dropped Gustavo and Roland off to take a taxi tour of St. Lucia before they pick up their flights back home tonight. We started out the day at anchor with a sunrise breakfast followed by one last swim in the 29c water. What a way to wake up!

A sad note as we left Rodney Bay as we heard the yacht Ocean Wanderer calling in to the Fort de France MMRC station. They had one of the crew pass away with a heart attack while at sea about 4 days ago and have been motoring their way in since then. It's a grim reminder of how serious crossing an ocean is. We're grateful for our good health and safety while we were on our passage and extend our condolences to the families of the crew of Ocean Wanderer.

With our crew members dispatched to land, Sean and I got Feelin' Good pointed in the direction of St. Martin and spent time cleaning and arranging the yacht back to its pristine shape. While everyone was careful about taking care of her while on our crossing, it's hard to do so to the same level as when there's only two onboard. With not much else to do as we past the beautiful island of Martinique, we cleaned and made (you guessed it!) pasta for lunch.

As night fell, we had a gorgeous sunset while lightning played in the clouds over the island we were passing. A full moon popped out and I remembered there was to be a lunar eclipse tonight but the viewing will be imperfect from where we are. We'll look for it on the later shifts. Right now, we began our usual three hours on and three hours off watch system. This passage will take abut 36 hours but, after crossing the Atlantic, it will probably seem like nothing.

At 03:00 we were passing the island of Montserat and their volcano was still spewing out a pretty good cloud of ash. All the way through sunrise I was looking for some partial eclipse of the moon but saw nothing. We must have been at the wrong angle. We'll pass St. Kitt's and Nevis, Saba and St. Bart's on the way into St. Martin today.

As the sun sets at about 18:00 and the marina office closes then too, we were trying to come in before then however we were about an hour late. So, we just picked out way though a field of unlit buoys and anchored boats to the marina entrance and grabbed a place for the night. Sean was on the bow with our searchlight spotting stuff for us to avoid. This morning we checked in, did customs, etc. and all is good in the land of great coffee and croissants!

It's been a beautiful passage along the Windward and now Leeward Islands of the Caribbean.