Martinique
Friday 20th Oct 17
Passage Barbados to le Marin
We are quite looking forward to go back to Martinique. Le Marin is not necessarily such a nice place but it is convenient. Hopefully there will be room in the bay. The passage from Barbados to Martinique is 120 miles, so we are expecting to be at sea for a day and one night, arriving probably on Saturday morning at some point. As it turns out we had the fastest sail ever. We are up wind, but the waves are not so high so they do not slow us down at all. We manage a good average of 7,5 knots over the ground with peaks of 8 and more at times. Exhilarating. And we did not get wet, a bonus. We were going so well that we actually arrived in Ste Anne around 11pm, after 14 hours. We are happy with that. The anchorage in St Anne is extremely busy, we don’t dare going too far in, we know there are fisherman’s lobster pots in there and god knows if everyone has got lights on. It is always nerves wracking to anchor at night, and we do not fancy going in the Marin at this time of the night. It is bound to be busy. At least we know the lay of the land in St Anne and there is plenty of room. All this sailing, plus the fact that we had such an early dinner, to have it done before dark during the passage that we were feeling peckish, so after sorting the boat out we had a midnight feast… love midnight feasts!
Saturday 21st Oct 17
Le Marin Pit stop
Not up so early today, sailing has obviously tired us. Still we only have to go inside the bay, should not take long at all. Within the hour we are parked near enough where we were last time we came in May, conveniently placed for the shops. We are still debating if we should go further afield and shop in the big Hyper U on the road to Fort de France. Not sure if it is worth it. Anyway, first thing first, I need to do a stock take of what we have left in terms of food on board. This should keep me occupied for a while…may even find stuff we have forgotten all about. Ian is going to shore to check in, he came back with good news; car hire for the day is only Euro 22. We could go shopping and maybe have a bit of a wander around. That will be Monday’s job.
The weather is not so good, loads of rain so just as well we need to sort things out inside. Every bit of food is taken out of lockers, and logged. Lockers are then cleaned and stuff put back in a more organised manner. Everything tends to get misplaced, especially when Ian cooks, things in wrong cupboards. Well that was Saturday done then.
Sunday 22nd October
Watching the yoles going out for a sail, amazing crafts. Would love to try it, looks like fun to me. Right, back to work. Every can, jar, pack, bottle has been accounted for; we have quite a bit left. We left Le Marin in May thinking that we would not have much choice in Grenada and that the prices would be expensive. As it turned out, we found that IGA was very well stocked and reasonably priced; they even had some M&S products like peppers in jar, which we had not seen since Spain, very useful. Fresh Peppers are expensive everywhere you go here if they have any at all. Needless to say, I did buy a few jars… like 15 of them. Maybe we don’t need so much after all. Although we have the added challenge of cooking for a vegetarian for 2 weeks… we might need some inspiration here!
When all is recorded in my spreadsheet, and we have a better idea of what we have, it would look like hiring a car to the big supermarket would be useful. Plus we want to go to Decathlon. We need another of these parachute hammock…at Euro 12, we may get more than one! As a reward for all this hard work with the food, we treat ourselves to lunch on shore, so we can access the internet and book the car for tomorrow.