A Sailing Trip to Remember (Or Maybe Forget)

I was excited - a trip to Martinique to meet Sailor Dave! We were to meet at a specific dock that I was to get to by taxi. I arrived, Dave did not. Instead there was a man holding a sign with my name on it! His name was Christian and his message - Dave is in the hospital! A great start to our vacation. After a stop to drop my stuff at the boat (situated in a water lane for the ferry that passed several times a day), off to the hospital I go in a cab!

Dave is in the hallway waiting for a room. His story is related in the next post called Peewee’s Great Adventure written by our Birthday Boy!

This is my story with and without Dave. So after seeing that Dave was in a room and basically okay, I took a cab back to the town where the boat was anchored. Christian showed me where to shop and then got me back to the boat and showed me how to work the dinghy.

View from hospital (Club Med in background!)

So I was on my own on the water without Sailor Dave! In the morning I took the dinghy to shore for breakfast. I actually anchored the dinghy the right way at the dock! Not sure how I knew, maybe telepathy from Dave in the hospital or looking at the other anchored dinghies. After a nice breakfast I went shopping for my dinner - great tomatoes, great french bread, and of course French wine. Very good for less than $3 per bottle! Back to the boat with my stash. Not so fast - at the dinghy I could not get the anchor pulled up. What to do - tie the anchor to the dock to be used for the duration of the trip and off I went.

Daily routine was breakfast in town, shopping for dinner, back to the boat for R&R, back to town to catch a bus to the hospital after getting Dave a nice lunch and at the hospital some fresh fruit and of course water which the hospital did not provide. Food yes, water no!

Not exactly the vacation I imagined. And at one point while on the boat eating my wonderful dinner, the the rocking from the ferries tossed a perfectly good glass of wine across the boat. I was actually thinking it might be nice to be back at work (and believe it or not I said this to Dave)! Not a very nice wife thing to say. My friend Sandy’s comment when I called her was "why don’t you check into a hotel?" Very practical advice that I ignored!

After 4 days of this routine I was sort of getting used to it, but did miss sharing my trip with someone, Dave mainly, but at this point anyone would do! As luck would have it, two guys stopped by the boat. One of them was from MN and knew about our boat's manufacturer. Very fortuitous. Besides going to dinner with them  and their crew (I invited myself), they agreed to move the boat to the dock where we were going to leave it. And they also retrieved that dinghy anchor for me.

One more adventure followed - the dingy motor cotter pin broke. I waved down a man on another boat who turned out to be an Argentinian sailor sunbathing on his yacht--in the nude. He took me to town (he did get dressed first), and Christian fixing the dinghy!

At last we were on our way home. Took some time to get checked out of the hospital (they wanted to be sure they would get paid - they did!), down to the boat to sleep our last night, and then off to the airport. It was an eventful flight home, but we finally made it.

In hindsight, the trip was a great adventure that we never need to repeat!

Jean Weiss