17 March 2011; Fort de France, Martinique.

Today we had our third stop in France with a call at Martinique. This was my first call here; at least with going alongside. In the past we always had to anchor. The cargo port was there of course but tendering brought the guests straight into down town which was much more preferable than the long walk, or the expensive taxi ride, from the cargo port. Now they have built a cruise pier. Due to the shallowness of the sea near the coast, they had to build quite far out into the sea, so it is about 600 feet to walk from the actual pier towards the main land, but then the town centre is just across the square from the bus station. The pier itself is a 75 meter platform with a dolphin to the East and two dolphins to the West and in that way also large ships can be accommodated while at the same time this construction is very cost effective. For the Prinsendam it is a perfect size and I happily docked the ship there for a full day stay.

The Atlantic weather forecast 3 days from now. We will be sailing through the “green part” which is wind force 4.

We are now one port (Barbados) away from the start of our crossing to Africa so my interest is now very much with the weather that we might experience on the crossing. We will be sailing not that far above the equator and thus the weather is on average quite good. Whatever there is for swell and wind, is mainly coming from the North Atlantic and by the time it makes it all the way down there, is has lost most of its edge. The weather forecast for the long term is at the moment indicating a good crossing as well, at least for the coming three days. Some weather forecasts give predictions for up to seven days but my experience is that 3 days is about the maximum that you can rely on it to a certain extent. With localized weather even less, proof given by what we experienced in the last two days with the local rain squalls that were not in the official weather forecast at all.  But open ocean weather does not have much localized issues in them and then the broad sweep of a three day forecast is normally reasonably accurate. So at the moment is looks quite good with winds around the 15 to 18 knots and ocean swells not exceeding the 8 feet.

 Today we had a number of squalls again but most of them were further to the North and did not reach the ship. Only in the late afternoon, we had a few good showers coming over us. When we left, I just managed to get out before the next shower came over and so remained dry while maneuvering on the bridge wing.

 The route to Barbados is taking us into the North Atlantic Ocean as this island is lying outside all the islands that form together the Eastern Caribbean rim. That means that we sail around the South point of Martinique and then by keeping that island on our port side and the island of St. Lucia on our starboard side we will sail into the North Atlantic. From there it is about 80 miles to Bridgetown Barbados and then we can do it at a slow pace.

 Our official arrival time is 0800 hrs. but I have to be early tomorrow due to port congestion. It will be a full house with six cruise ships in port of which two are using Bridgetown as a guest change over port and thus it will be a busy day.  It also means that the two berths closest to the cruise terminal will be occupied by those two –change over- ships and we will be docking further out on the North Breakwater. That is quite a distance away from the port gate, but the port is laying on small shuttle busses that run all day between the ship and the gate.