MARTINIQUE

We eventually decided to leave Bequia to head to Martinique.  We would be passing by St Vincent which is the largest island in the Grenadine chain as we had not heard particularly good reviews of the place in so much as the anchorages were not great and being a bigger island, the incidents of crime were higher.  

We would also head past St Lucia for the same anchoring reasons plus St Lucia is its own country and we would be required to check into and out of the island which is a pain in the proverbial for short stays. We would be doing an overnight sail from Bequia to Martinique so we left around 1pm Sunday afternoon and we would arrive at Martinique early the following morning around 7.30 – 8.00 am.  We have done many an overnight sail in Europe and of course Tony has done lots of overnights doing the crossing but for me it was a first overnight with rougher weather than I’d experienced before. 

The wind was around 15-18 knots for most of the way, but the sea state was wavier which meant a rocky ride for most of the trip.  This makes moving around the boat more difficult and sleeping or napping was challenging.  

We had one small incident in the early morning when I was on watch.  The wind speed suddenly increased up to 25-30 knots out of nowhere and before I could raise Tony to help reef in the head sail the wind caught it and the sail appeared to blow out.  We quickly worked out the sheet (rope) that furled the head sail in had snapped off so we were still able to wind in the sail. The sail was perfectly fine, and we just needed to tie another rope on, and it was good to go.  These things happen so quickly that you can not predict the sudden change in wind.  We had a reef in the headsail already so we were thinking ahead but perhaps if Tony had been at the helm he would have turned the boat into the wind to relieve the pressure on the sail before the problem happened.  It’s a learning curve. 

As we continued towards Martinique, we watched the rain clouds build up and give us a welcome drenching before we came into the anchorage of Sainte Anne.  We secured the boat, had a shower and went to sleep for a few hours. 

We were very surprised to find when we left the anchorage at Sainte Anne that we had been there for 8 days.  When Tony was writing in the logbook on the way out of the anchorage he said, “We’ve been here 8 days!!” but it certainly hadn’t felt that long.  Goes to show you can lose days on end when you get into this yachting lifestyle. While we stayed at Sainte Anne, which was a huge sand anchorage where there would hade been up 200 boats moored, we took the dinghy into Le Marin, about 4km away to the marina and shopping area.  Tony was able to find a specialist shop to provide battery isolators for the engines to replace the old ones which weren’t working very efficiently. 

We also had a wander around the small town of Sainte Anne and the nearby beach and resort.  What we discovered is that Martinique is just like being in Europe/France. Everyone speaks French and not so much English, there are definitely more “European” people than local Caribbean people.  The currency is Euros and it just feels different to the previous islands we have visited.  We found that if we could get off the boat once during the day for whatever reason it made the day more purposeful. 

We did have lunch one day in a restaurant in Sainte Anne and there were two young guys working there.  The guy who served us was very friendly and helpful and spoke very good English, he recognised we were from Australia.  He had just spent a year travelling and working around the NSW town on Ballena.  When we were paying, the other young guy came up to speak to us as he had also been to Australia working, but he had been in Perth, so he was very excited to talk with us and relay the experiences he had had.  He is on a mission to come back to WA and work again.  I can understand the excitement these guys would have had to find Australians in Martinique to talk about their experiences with.  We are definitely missing talking to people that know where you come from and understand the culture.  Tony was kayaking the other day and stopped to talk to an Aussie guy but there certainly isn’t very many of us around. That makes a total of two Australians we have found!