We've hit Paradise ! A Caribbean island with French food and shops plus five days of Carnival!

 We're still in Martinique and anchored off the capital of Fort de France and probably consuming far too many baguettes and pains aux chocolat than is good for us!

Eventually we left St.Lucia on 29 th January and had a good sail up to Martinique . We checked in at Marin which is a good place for provisioning as one of the big supermarkets    

Leader Price – has its own dinghy dock. Also one of the cafes has a good wifi link so we had an afternoon of internet and e-mails. We only stayed for one night (see The Uninvited Visitor ) and headed round the corner to St. Annes.

St. Annes is a huge anchorage but fairly sheltered in nice water. The town has a good dock and some reasonable shops plus a local market. We met up with several of our friends from the summer ‘Flying Cloud', Raft and Amanzi and enjoyed the odd glass of rum!  

In fact one evening we invited everyone to come aboard with a different rum and we had a tasting night! After several glasses even the one that came in a three litre box tasted good!

 

The area around St. Annes has some stunning scenery and with Rick & Lucy from Flying Cloud we went on a long walk to Pointe des Salines and through the ‘Savane des Petrifications'.

The walk took us from the sheltered west coast where there are long sandy beaches and calm seas to the rocky and reef strewn east coast where the Atlantic hurls itself on to the cliffs. There is also the moonlike landscape around the salt lake. Like mainland France the walking tracks are well marked and a lot of the time we were in the shade of trees. Needless to say after six and a half hours (not planned we just kept going) and about 13 miles we all collapsed at the bar for a cold beer!

 

We decided to do more exploring and hired a car for a couple of days. The roads are quite good although through the mountains a little swoopy! The scenery is not as dramatic as St. Lucia but the shopping is better! Sharon indulged in a trip to Galerie Lafayette and managed to find the latest issue of ‘Art et Deco' to give her a house magazine fix!   We found a charming Creole restaurant in Tartane on the Presqu'ile de la Caravelle. Andrew had a very good locally caught fish and Sharon found that the vegetarian option was a bowl of rice!

The rest of the time has been spent working on the varnish on the boat which had been a little neglected in the last couple of months.

Instead of just recoating we are stripping it all back to bare wood and starting a fresh which takes a fair amount of time but the end result is excellent.

 

The weather has slowed us a little as we have had some fairly strong trade winds recently, we keep forgetting it is winter as the temperature is still in the 80's and much drier than the summer. During the non – work hours Andrew has spent a lot of time on the computer sorting out his ever growing music collection and Sharon is still keeping up with her painting and drawing.

After seeing the pre-Carnival parade at St. Annes we decided to stay in Martinique for Carnival and on the 15 th February sailed round to the capital of Fort de France.

The anchorage is quiet nice under the shadow of the old Fort St.Louis although can be a bit rolly when the ferries go past. Fortunately they stop at night.

The main town is easy to walk round and lots of shops and supermarkets as well as the obligatory fruit and vegetable market. With Rick & Lucy we took the bus to the botanical gardens at Balata which were the strangest we had seen. There were lots of palms, ferns and bamboos which were stunning but some of the plantings evoked scenes from Day of the Triffids! But it was certainly interesting.

 

From Saturday 17th for five days the town was taken over by Carnival and we did little else but enjoy the atmosphere. There will be a Carnival Special posted soon and plenty of photographs. Now we are settling back to a routine while we wait for a weather window to head north. This week has strong winds and big seas forecast.

We will probably have one more stop in Martinique at St. Pierre in the north. Originally the capital, it was destroyed by a volcano in the early 20 th century. Several ships sunk in the harbour and allegedly one man survived. He was a prisoner and the thick walled jail cellar saved him. From there we will move to Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic ) which we skipped on our way south.

Apparently the scenery is stunning and with excellent swimming as well so we are looking forward to that.  

Warm regards

Sharon & Andrew