If it’s not one thing, it’s one thing.
Marnie McCarthy
Once back in St. Lucia we left almost immediately for Martinique, where we planned to spend a night in St. Pierre, the northernmost check-out place, then head to Guadeloupe. The best of plans. Then we blew out our parasail and our electric winch in one suddenly ridiculously windy afternoon on our way to St. Pierre. Dark days, I assure you. After an hour of hauling in the whipping sail by hand we headed directly to Fort de France, in hopes of finding a chandlery there with the parts needed to fix the winch. (We would worry about the para after the winch was taken care of.) In a happy coincidence, we found another ARC boat, Great Dane, in the FdF anchorage, and though we’d not formally met Sophie and Sven, the Belgian owners, they immediately agreed to join us for a bottle of wine and listen to our tale of woe. They were the balm we needed, and we crossed paths with them again several weeks later and enjoyed an evening on their gorgeous Fontaine Pajot Saona with their dog Snow. We scoured FdF the following day without luck, so back to Le Marin we bashed. There we ordered the parts for the winch and took the para to the sailmaker with fingers crossed and cautious optimism. We spent the next ten+ days hanging around, first in Anse Dufour, then in St. Pierre, and waited “patiently” for the parts to arrive and some word from the sailmaker.
Anse Dufour is a smallish, beautiful, lively inlet with terrible, I mean really awful, holding. It lures you in with the promise of sand, it makes you think you’re well stuck – and it looks dug in! – but you still have to reset every day, then finally it wakes you up at 5 am to the sound of your anchor alarm howling that you’re dragging towards the rocks. By then we’d had enough and didn’t stick around to rehook, just pointed north and picked up a nice, secure mooring ball in St. Pierre, a lovely little town on the northwest coast about 4 hours from Le Marin.
St. Pierre is infamous for suffering the devastating eruption of Mt. Pelee in 1902, in which by most accounts all but one inhabitant of the town was killed, and over 300 vessels offshore (of what was then the largest commercial port in the Antilles) were torched and sunk, crew included. The volcano now sits placidly behind the town atop lushly green hills and meadows, often swathed in clouds, and is continuously monitored for seismic activity. We visited the ruins of the prison, where the one survivor was being held in a small stone cell – his protection from the eruption. It was four days before he was rescued, covered in burns. Other accounts describe a 10-year-old girl rowing a boat to a cave and surviving, as well as crew who jumped into the boiling hot sea. He reportedly survived, but also with terrible burns. Within minutes, the town was gone, with just about everyone in it dead.
We walked a lot around St. Pierre and enjoyed a few good lunches at local places. There were some delicious fusions of French and Caribbean foods, and the baguettes at the local patisserie made the camembert, comté, and brie taste even better. (You know how I feel about cheese.)
We really enjoyed just walking through the streets though. Peter has developed an interest in photographing architectural textures, so our eyes sharpen on details we might otherwise miss. The anthropologist in me looks for stories, and I spend a lot of time asking people questions and chatting. There’s a story in everything, everywhere, all the time.
Finally, back down to Le Marin, where with the new parts Peter was able to fix the winch, and the sailmaker delivered the stunning blow that they were unable to repair the parasail. If we can buy a new wing from Oxley, the manufacturer in Germany, then it could be done. Heartbreak. We’re out of souls to mortgage, Lyn!
So, with that, we spent almost three weeks in Martinique, rather than the three days we’d originally allotted in our rough schedule for the months until May 28th, when we’ll put the boat on the hard in Grenada for hurricane season. It was a serious blow, and implied that we were going to have to make some hard decisions about how far north in the Leeward Islands we would be able to go before turning around to head back south to Grenada. We’d planned to go as far as St. Barth, and stop in Guadeloupe, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Barth on the way north, then in Montserrat, Antigua and Barbuda, and Dominica on our way south again. Distance would obviously be a factor, so St. Barth’s, and probably St. Kitts/Nevis were probably out. That left Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua/Barbuda, and possibly Montserrat. Everyone we know in the Caribbean loves Antigua – “oh, my favorite place in the world!” “Amazing beaches!” “Amazing restaurants!” “Don’t miss Nelson’s Dockyard!” – so we figured we would try to get that far and assess our schedule then.
In the meantime, Le Marin had battered us on every visit with ceaseless winds, and every trip up or down the coast seemed to bring wind on the nose and a bash against the waves. Squalls popped up out of nowhere, and our luck was on Empty. We were really, really ready to get out of Martinique.
UP NEXT: Nous aimons la Guadeloupe!