Sailing for Dominica Mar 30-Apr 1,09
Mar 30,09
We up anchored and sailed off the hook this morning and went from 8:00am muster to sailing under all plain sail in about one and a half hours.
Just as we were preparing to get underway a small tanker came into the anchorage which made things a bit crowded. We also had an inter island freighter anchored beside us. As the anchor came up we backed the outer jib and set the fore lower topsail aback and we spun around on our heal quite nicely.
The winds have shifted around more to the East which means we will be heading into them going this way as we were going into them coming North. The Captain says we should be able to sail most of the way however which will be good.
Yesterday while I was ashore I spent some time reading up on Dominica. There are 9 volcanoes there many of which have been active in the last 10,000 years. Dominica is probably island that has the greatest concern since it is overdue for a major eruption. My kind of place 
Since we will be there for about 10 days I hope to get a good look at some of it.
More later…
It’s mid afternoon and I go on watch in an hour or so.
The weather is fabulous with a steady Force 4 wind blowing from the East and we are sailing “Full and By” as close to South as we can get. The water is an amazingly luminous blue to windward. I noticed on the way North that it changed from the green that was common around Grenada to blue. Going this way the bright Sun in the almost cloudless blue sky is making the seas practically glow to windward of us. I’m continually amazed at the range of colours that the surface of the sea assumes. Sometimes it depends on the weather or the depth of the sea but other times there doesn’t seem to be anything obviously different from the day before but the sea is definitely a different colour. Today is one of those days. Beautiful!
Thanks for reading.
KJ
Tues Mar 31,09
I can’t believe it’s nearly April already.
Well the nice weather didn’t last through our aftermnoon watch resterday by 7:00pm it was squally and raining pretty heavily. After we got off watch the ship really started to roll for a while but settled down by the time I went on watch at 4:00am.
Our night watch was good. My helm trick was from 6:00 to 7:00am this morning just as the Sun was rising above a bank of clouds in the East. We are sailing “Full and By” trying to head as close to South as we can get. I always have trouble sailing that way because I tend to over steer a bit when correcting which causes us to fall off farther than we need to. Also today we didn’t have the royals set so we have to use the leach of the T’gallant to determine our closest windward course. It is more sensitive to the rolling of the ship which mimics the luffing which means we are as close as we can get to the wind. I think I did OK as I managed to keep the course close to SSE on average which was pretty good. If I do say so myself
We are heading SExE under all sail, except for the Mizzen staysail and gaff topsail, and we may be able to get to Dominica under sail alone.
Thanks for reading.
KJ
Wed April 1,09
We took in our sails and fired up the engine midway through our watch.
We arrived in Dominica at 9:30am this morning and am now anchored “stern to” just off shore The shore is very steep here our stern, which is maybe 40′ from the shore, is in something like 20′ of water and our bow is in more than 70′! We are waiting to get cleared in currently then I will be going ashore to check out what there is to see.
More later…