We flew back to Nova Scotia on June 5th and the summer has flown by. WE stayed with our daughter and our three grand kids which was surprisingly good. WE will stay for |Christmas and are flying back to Antigua on December 28th. All reports say the boat had faired well with on minor hatch leak during the last storm but Edwin fixed it. We are excited to get back and really enjoyed our time with friends and family here in The Maritime,s a very nice balance. I will update when we get back to the boat. Chow for now.

We woke up early as I wanted to get a mooring as there were none left last night... so I spotted a couple of cats leaving early so I said to Joyce..... Lets get going and grab those moorings.  So off we go.  barily a coffee and no broffee,  so off we go chasing for that mooring.  I am at the bow ready to grab the mooring and Joyce is at the helm, we have our headsets on and all I can hear in the headset is "For Fu#$@'s Sake"  What Joyce?   "The motor quick"   "What!? So I rechecked the fuel as I switched back to the Starboard tank when we ran out yesterday thinking it was a dirty filter but now we were out of fuel.  Had to change tanks and both filters while we dropped the anchor where we were.  She grabbed which was good...as we were moving back on to other boats in the mooring field.  While I was changing the filters, Joyce saw a snorkeler around the boat and he popped up and she said hi and indicated we were having engine issues so we just dropped our anchor right here.... he said he could check our anchor if you wish... She said sure.  Off he goes....while he is doing that, Scott gets finished and we try the engine...Yeah.. it goes.  Meanwhile our new French friend is diving on our anchor checking it.  He comes back and says we have a good hold but pushed it in just in case.  We thanked him dearly.  2 mins later we lifted up to grab another mooring that just came free as we lost the first 2.  Felt kinda bad since he dove about 45 feet to check it.  Off we go.  We got a mooring now.  It was not long till we got in the dingy to town and in to make up time for the lack of Broffee that we didn't have in the morning. WE spent the next several days in the Saintes enjoying our walks each morning and the french cafes at night. The food, music and shopping here is great but expensive since they are dealing in euros. Ut wasnt to long before we hauled anchor and headed for Guadalupe.

Long ass haul (LAH)  from Martinque to the Ile Saintes....74 miles.  Our motor quit off Dominique after see the dolphins ride our bow....oh well.  I had to change the tank and both filters.  Bled the system and got us going again.  No moorrings avilable when we arrived so we dropped the anchor around 5:30 pm.  Had a drink and checked out the town.  Beautiful....reminded me of a small south of France town.  Had a great Pizza and wine of course and headed back to the boat (Joyce is in love, amour.... with the Saintes)  Wished I had of spent more time in French class. 

We woke up this morning swaying to our anchor in beautiful Martinique which is a  french Island. The contrast when traveling from a Caribbean island to a french island is pretty amazing. These islands are only a short distance apart, however the language, architecture, food and people are worlds apart. After a relaxing morning on the boat decided to go into town before everything closed up for the afternoon hrs are usually 0800-1200 & 1500 - 1800. The restaurants open for dinner at 1900-2100. The language is a bit of a challenge but with  a bit of pointing at pictures we were able to find the tourist bureau which offers free clearing in for visiting yachts. You clear in online with  a computer they provide and it takes about 5 minutes, very nice. After strolling around for a bit we found a nice french cafe with wifi and a great view of the water so this is currently where we are updating, emailing and doing some banking (some tedious chores but the french wine and atmosphere is hard to beat). The people here are really friendly and helpful so once we finish here in the cafe we will  do a little shopping to stock up  on our wine and cheese:) Tomorrow our plan is to sail up to Portsmouth, Dominique which is about 50 miles so it will be an early night and a long day of motoring based on the light air forecast.

This morning we were planing of leaving around 0630 but I woke up sick with a bad sinus cold so we decided to maybe hold off until the following day, I felt a bit better as the morning wore on so I ran into town for a few quick supplies. Once I was back on the boat we decided what the heck lets get going with a great forecast it was hard not too, so we goat away at 0930 three hours later than planned. We stowed our dinghy and motor on the deck, hauled up our anchor and we were off with a nice a4 knot NE breeze. We shut the motor off soon after leaving and started on eof  the best sails so far. We had the main and jib reefed a bit because not matter what the forecast says its always always stronger than expected. The breeze didn't disappoint us and had soon built up to about 18knots and had us flying along at over 8knots for  the majority of the day. Boy it sure helps  to have a clean bottom to keep  the boat going fast.The sun was out and the temp was about 80 degrees and we managed to pass to similar sized boats like they were standing still:0) My time with my tutor JIm MacDonald and all the sailing was starting to pay off, we are really starting to understand how to make Rose Lee move. Forty three miles under our keel and six hours later we pulled into St. Pierre, Martinique feeling like sailing gods. WE set the anchor in 25 feet af water and got a great set right away, wow this day just kept getting better. After relaxing for a bit we took a buzz into town to check out the sites and grab an appetizer and have some wine. I put on my favorite shorts and Joyce put on a nice dress and away we went. The dingy dock was a large fixed concrete pier, which is something I haven't seen before so I approached slowly and switched into neutral. Unbeknownst to us there was a bit  of a current running under the peir and even though Joyce and I grabbed hold of the dock the dinghy decided it just wanted to keep going right under the pier, well this isnt good. So now the dinghy is all the way under the pier and Joyce and I are cling to the dock with our feet in the dinghy and our asses in the water and are about to g swimming without our dinghy. Luckily there was another guy who just jumped into his boat and was able to grab the back of our dinghy and pull our boat out from under the pier. Well with wet asses and a red face I got the dinghy squared  away and was to get safely on the dock with Joyce, had a few laughs tonight while enjoy our wine and food and we were pretty well dry by the time we returned to the boat. Lesson learned today everything goes in the dry bag lesson (2) when approaching a dinghy dock be afraid! be very afraid!:)