Not long ago I made a post on our Facebook page about the crew of the catamaran anchored in front of us who were lounging around naked on their boat. My point of the post was that it really wasn’t appropriate given that they were anchored just off the beach in Dominica, an island where public nudity is not only frowned upon but illegal. The post garnered a lot of responses and I was surprised at just how uptight some people were, with certain comments bordering on homophobic. We have no problem shedding our clothes on ZTC but are a bit more selective about when and where we do it. Not so with our neighbors here in Martinique though. No, our friends have been joking that it appears as if we’ve anchored in the middle of the nudist colony.

Amusingly to us, the 3 men on the large catamaran in front of us have no problem running around in the buff. In fact, they’ve been hard at work on their boat, polishing and scrubbing, all sans clothing, save for some rubber gloves or the occasional T-shirt. Yesterday, in fact, one of them was operating some sort of power tool while naked, an act I fail to see the wisdom in!

As if that wasn’t enough, another boat came in and anchored almost on top of us and the skipper was completely naked as he did so. While many cruisers do shed their clothing while sailing, most everyone does put them back on before making their way into an anchorage. Not this guy though. The boat anchored unnecessarily close to us but I decided to let it go, not wishing to have a French to English confrontation with the naked dude. Unfortunately, that would prove to be a mistake as some hours later, the wind shifted and that boat ended up swinging into us. We heard the noise as the hulls bumped but apparently no one on the other boat did. Reaching over and knocking on his hull, I was forced to draw the skipper up on deck anyway, sending him off to go re-anchor elsewhere in the dark. Oh yeah, he was still naked then too.

Rebecca and I are currently anchored in the well protected anchorage of Le Marin, Martinique. Not far from us are our friends John and Kathy on Oceana and Doug and Wendy on Nahanni River. I think each of them have plans to move from here to St. Lucia when the weather allows it while we intend to sail directly to St. Vincent, bypassing St. Lucia altogether. Of course, we’d like to have some settled weather for that overnight passage and from what we’ve read, that may not occur for a few days.

This is not a bad place to hang out though. As I said, the anchorage is protected, especially tucked in behind the reefs as we are now. The provisioning is also excellent. In fact, we have had friends who have sailed back and forth from St. Lucia solely to stock up their boats with food and drink. Yesterday we made trips to two full-blown grocery stores, each only steps from a dinghy dock. We will not be going hungry here, that’s for sure. Today our plan, among other chores, is to visit the local chandleries to pick up a few boat items. I’m sure we’ll have plenty to keep us busy here while we’re waiting for weather to head south, and we get to continue working on our French!

While many old school or small boat sailors are comfortable with the wind information they get from a piece of yarn tied to their rigging, ZTC came with a wind speed instrument and I like it. On our boat, and many others like it, a masthead wind transducer sends both speed and directional data to a display at our helm. Working together with an underwater speed transducer (which frequently does not work), it tells us both true and apparent wind speed and direction. The unit has served us quite well and has only stopped functioning on maybe 3 or so occasions, each for no more than a day. Why did it stop working? I never did find out. Such is the difficulty with troubleshooting an intermittent fault. I suspect the problems are caused by a loose or corroded connection at the mast step which I tend to clean up when faced with issues with the device but I never did prove that conclusively.

Anyway, before we went cruising, I read on one of the techie websites about a masthead wind unit that worked with no moving parts. That sounded like a great idea and much less fragile than the little spinning cups that most people have sitting on top of their mast. I had expected that in the 3 years that have passed that this technology would be more widely used but it doesn’t seem as if that’s the case, at least not that I have observed. Our friend Bob just posted about a similar product not too long ago so I know that the technology is still available for purchase. If I was outfitting a boat from scratch I think I’d seriously look at this. As both ZTC and the Leopard that we’ll soon be upgrading both have a normal masthead wind transducer, I think I’ll have to wait a while before I personally get to test one of these guys out.

Speaking of Leopard upgrades, we finally settled on an engine for our new tender: a Yamaha F40, 40 HP 4-stroke. Both tender and engine should be waiting for us at Budget Marine in St. Maarten when we swing through on our way to Grenada with the new boat.

Our recent trip to Fort de France, Martinique marks our third stop in that anchorage. I have never been to France but if my imagination is accurate, that Martinique city is very much like one in their faraway kinsman’s country. As Rebecca and I prepared to head to town to shop and explore, I commented to her that she seemed to be a bit dressed up for such an excursion. She replied by saying that she always feels underdressed when walking around Fort de France and to tell the truth, I can see why she would feel that way. Most everyone there looks tres chic!

One of the items that we were both shopping for in town was a new pair of sunglasses. Rebecca’s had recently broken and I left my old and cracked pair on a bus in Roseau (I swear that I did not do so on purpose just so that I would have an excuse to buy a new pair). A comfortable pair of sunglasses is a necessity here in the tropics, especially for someone like me who tends to squint even on the cloudiest day. When we first left Canada to go cruising we had onboard a box full of various pairs of sunglasses, all collected from our gym’s lost and found. That supply has all but vanished though, each pair having been lost to the rigors of our active lifestyle. Fortunately, there was no shortage of sunglasses to choose from in Fort de France. Every street corner sported a vendor with a rack of cheap ones to sell and in addition to those, several optical stores stocked all of the latest name brands. We each chose something that we felt comfortable with and our eyes are much happier because of it. They question now is who will be able to hang on to their glasses the longest, Rebecca or I. Considering that I spent a fair bit more on my pair than she did, I think we’re both really hoping that I’ll win out.

New sunglasses purchased in Fort de France. Guess what though…
this is an image taken from a previous trip to that city.

In contrast to Fort de France, we’ve spent the last couple of days in Grand Anse d’Arlets, a touristy little beach town. This morning we’ll be raising anchor to move around the corner to Le Marin, a trip of about 13 miles or so, 10 of it being dead east. Because of that last part, our plan is to depart at 6:00 AM before the trades pick up. That will hopefully make the trip a tad easier.

On numerous occasions I’ve mentioned the website Active Captain. We consult the Active Captain anchorage reviews when planning all of our stops and have chosen charting software (Polar View, Garmin Bluechart Mobile) because of their seamless integration of that data. In spite of AC’s success (or perhaps because of it), the website’s founder, Jeffrey Siegel, has not been at rest. In addition to continuing to improve and promote Active Captain, he has just introduced his latest brainchild, eBoatCards.

Our original boat cards.

Boat cards, like business cards for cruisers, are very common for those on the water. With the increasing prevalence of laptop computers, iPads and smart phones, eBoatCards seems like the natural evolution of the paper product. I encourage readers to visit the site and read the documentation online there but the basic idea is that cruisers (boaters, businesses, wannabes) can create a user profile with all their particulars. Using a downloadable smart phone app, users can exchange “cards” with other users who they come into contact with. All of this data can then be searched, accessed, etc. on other online devices. While what I have described may seem like a novelty to some people, there is much more to it. In addition to its current functionality, I know that Jeffrey has much more in store for this product as he appears to always be thinking 10 steps ahead. I asked him for a quote on his new release and this is what he had to say:

Your chartplotter tells you “how” to get from point A to point B. We always thought of ActiveCaptain as helping you with “why” to go to point B (reviews, features, details). Now we see eBoatCards as helping you with “who” is at point B or who is moving around you to create a more social environment while cruising. Through groups it’ll also help to give identity to each boater and learn more about what is at different destinations.

eBoatCards adds to ActiveCaptain to create something that we call “Social Navigation”.

I would encourage everyone to visit his site, create a new profile and after doing so, look up Zero To Cruising and link up with us. I think it’s only a matter of time before this new site becomes as valuable to cruisers as Active Captain is presently.

The last couple of days we have been observing our friends John and Kathy on s/v Oceana deploy their dinghy outboard engine each morning and then re-store it on their rail each evening. The job is made relatively painless for them with the help of the nice outboard engine hoist that they have permanently installed on the stern of their boat.

We do not have such a crane but a year and a half ago, I uploaded a video that demonstrated how we use our boom and main sheet to take care of this task. Although our procedure works for the most part, because the boom is not quite long enough to reach all the way back to the rail, it still does require me to muscle the engine up onto and off of the storage bracket, something that a smaller or weaker person might have difficulty with. I know it’s a challenge for me, especially in less than calm water!

Our friends’ nice system has me putting more though into streamlining our technique. The question is, how to do it without spending a bunch of money on a dedicated crane? The image below saved from the blog Toast Floats illustrates one method which could work, a homemade boom extension with a block and tackle on one end. I’m sure the extension will work like a charm but I’d prefer to have it built out of something a bit less bulky than the 2×4s shown in the image. While I’m brainstorming here on how to best do that, I’m open to comments and suggestions.