Location: Dominica to Les Saintes
Today started out with another wonderful breakfast by our French chef, Edouard; waking up to the fresh smell of crepes and fruit reminded us of our next voyage to Les Saintes, a tiny French island where most of the local people are kicking back on the weekend from Guadeloupe. We made a quick and painless effort to get the boat ready. Our sail north was thought to be stress-free, but as soon as we got closer, we were welcomed by a narrow channel we had to squeeze through. After that, we had more obstacles, and I had to have three people on bow watch helping me steer through handfuls of fishing traps scattered around between the islands. We practiced our tacking up through the narrow bay and unfortunately had to fire up the engine when I got us into irons and were close to shore. We made it to our anchorage safely and got sails down in a timely manner, pulling up to a new and beautiful island town with awesome greenery and pink and orange roofs scattered all over. We then got some Boat Appreciation going and gave O-Star a good scrub on the whole deck, organized our food supply down below, and had an interesting time cleaning the hull with all of the ferry traffic and people passing by. After our boat appreciation session, we got a pleasant compensation for learning how to drive Exy, the smaller tiller dinghy we have on board. We showered and then had some downtime before dinner. We wrapped up our day by sharing our hopes of where we’d be in our 70s and had a slice of India with one of our best curries yet, made again by Edouard and Albert. After our awesome biological Oceanography class, we all got ready for anchor watch shifts and some much-needed sleep.