16-2-2022 attempting to sail to fort de France

Well today we planned to head up the coast a little way to Fort de France (the big town) to do some shopping. 
Alas weather got in the way and we found 31 knot winds as we sailed north at 5 knots on a headsail alone about the size of a bedsheet!!!
As we arrived at the inlet for Fort de France the wind was still strong and our attempt to motor up the inlet to get to one of the anchorages was pretty poor with a max speed of 1.9 knots ... At that rate it would be 3 hours to get to the anchorage. 
We decided to bail out and head for a sheltered anchorage on the west coast called St Pierre. This is up near the volcano that Alfie and I climbed a few days ago.
It took us about 2 hours to get up here motor sailing at 6 knots and the wind here is pretty low. We have a hugs set of high cliffs sheltering our anchor spot.

It looks to be quite a good place for sunset spottig. Our friends on some other ARC boats, Water Dogs, Kithara Dragonfly are here too. It's traditionally the pace to wait for good weather to sail North to Dominica and Guadeloupe. Right now that means it's quite full. With a very steep drop off we have to moor very close to those cliffs so we will be watching the anchor monitor pretty closely tonight.

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