Rainbow Over St. Pierre, Martinique

First, here are photos of our new cockpit lampshade,  and the light it emits on the table at night and through its holes that create the cat pictures.

We spent five more days in Martinique, in three ports,  after leaving St. Anne, with three boring, low wind and hence motoring passages, aggregating 34 miles. Our first night we had intended to stay at Petit Anse D’Arlet, but the wind's direction made the other part of the bay, Anse Chaudiere, a better anchorage. This was after passing between the mainland and Rocher Diamont (Diamond Rock) which the British had commissioned as one of its warships. One of the Ste. Anne photos showed it in the distance and here it is up close.

We could have dinked to the pretty town of Petit D'Arlet, with its church at the head of the dock and some racing going on:

but elected to stay aboard, except for snorkeling where we checked our anchor lying on the bottom. Roger swam for ten minutes watching a turtle down below, and Lene found several schools (possibly part of one big school) of yellow fish, about 7 inches long that were as stationary as they could be. They moved perhaps a foot one way with bottom currents, and a second later, without turning, they were moved back. Hundreds of them.  There were only three other boats in the entire anchorage and one of them was a 26 foot bright yellow one on which Marie and her husband live. Lots of room here.

Marie has no water tanks (only bottles of rain water), head (but has a bucket), or outboard for their dinghy (but it has oars); living on a budget one might say. We had met Marie on Teepee and they speak no English so we hailed them, and next day watched them row their dink to town.

Next day, it was to the Capital, Fort de France, as we continued our clockwise passage around the island to its north.  Actually, we did have about one hour of a glorious fast beat as we headed into the huge bay in which FdF is located -- full sails and strong winds and 6.9 knots speed over the bottom. We were winning the undeclared race with a green-dodgered, French-flagged Beneteau until we had to tack, at which point Roger just furled the Genoa and motored the last mile. The anchorage was lovely, under a massive stone fort still in active service abutting the town. 

They have a large wood and metal seawall which serves as a dinghy dock, to the left of the fort and to the right of the ferry dock which is adjacent to the bus terminal. 

Mercifully, the little ferry boats, which run fast, frequently and all daylong, creating big wakes, do not run at night.  We visited the Schoelcher Library, which is the first listed tourist attraction in town.Here is the front door with its name above.

It is named (as are streets and another town on the island) after the leading abolitionist of the island. It was built in Paris at fin du siècle and brought over brick by brick and reassembled. They had an exhibition of their Gaugin books. Roger had always associated Gaugin with Polynesia, but apparently (all signage in French so Roger could be wrong) he worked on Martinique as well. We visited markets and got some southern Bahamian charts and a new dinghy lock to replace the old which had become so “crusty” that the key had broken off in the lock while Roger tried to open it to lubricate it. We spent four hours in an internet café.

One night, Roger tore the boat apart (and later put it back together again) to inefficiently but successfully locate a leak.  It turns out that the sea water (taste test) was coming through the seacock (valve) that lets seawater into the macerator (pump with teeth in it to chew up sewage and pump it overboard), through a hose to the macerator, then through it and to a hose connecting it the holding tank for sewage, filling that tank which overflowed into the bilge and was being pumped out by the bilge pump.Closing the macerator seacock has solved the problem for now.

Our last port on Martinique was St. Pierre. We visited last season.  It was quite rolly here with wind, tide and waves pushing the boat in different directions. Our first anchorage spot was between a boat from Annapolis and one from Nantucket. We were the last to arrive so when things got rolly and boats faced all different directions it was much too close for comfort and we moved further from the dock to a spot where there was lots of room around us. Carl of Nantucket came over, attracted by the cats; his were at home. He keeps his boat in these islands and uses it as a vacation home for six weeks twice a year. He is a chef and carpenter and looks and dresses a bit like the sailing columnist in Cruising World magazine, Fatty Goodlander. Roger offered him a beer and had one with him. He is headed to St. Lucia to meet his wife, a teacher, and drop off his two sons and one’s girlfriend, in their 20’s. We helped him with recent local knowledge of St. Lucia, to which he has never sailed;  he returned the favor with information about favored spots in the lower Bahamas, which he has sailed often. 

In the evening we had dinner at Tamaya, a very fishy restaurant. It is named after a 19^th century square rigger built in Liverpool which died here in the volcanic eruption of 1902. It is decorated with boat pictures and paraphernalia. Small, 28 seats, it is very French, and the proprietress, who served us, speaks no English. We had tuna and shark for our main courses. A group of six Germans, from the ten aboard a chartered catamaran, entered after us. One of them worked in the small town in SW Germany where Roger’s father was born and raised, 100 years ago. They took our picture for us. Lene with une verre d l'eau. 

On our lay day, we had planned to hike to a rum distillery, a beach or a butterfly farm but it rained so after an internet cafe and checkout we repaired to ILENE and had a quiet night aboard.

We noticed that throughout this island (and perhaps it is true of the other French islands) they do not believe in cleats atop the dinghy docks; rather they attach rings, perhaps 4” in diameter, to hang from the vertical face of the dock, to which to attach one’s dinghy. These French Islands are “Departments” of France (whatever that means). France seems to support them more than the English do their former colonies.  They seem less poor. Construction cranes are in several locations we observed, and on weekdays they are moving. This may be an illusion of relative affluence, however, based on insufficient evidence. It was on this island that we were victimized by petty crime. The portable, hand held, battery powered navigation lights that we use when motoring in the dinghy at night, one red and green and the other white, were placed in the dinghy’s little forward enclosed locker space while we were ashore, and were gone when we returned. Perhaps someone found their Christmas colors too irresistible.