Good Sailing
Generally we had a really good overnight sail down to Martinique. Based on the difficulty of flying back to the US, I missed the decommissioning ceremony of my sub (USS Chicago - SSN 721) on July 21st. It was a bit disappointing, but being at sea was a rather fitting way to miss the ceremony. We had great wind and were able to get up to 7.21 knots (we sailed faster but the 721 theme was noteworthy).
One strange thing happened just before sunset on the 20th though. Flying in from the west there appeared to be an airplane. After a few minutes of watching it move in rather strange ways, I pointed it out to Grete and we realized that it was actually very close, and moreover that it was a very large drone. I think it was a military drone, possibly running drug interdiction missions or something. After a few minutes hovering off our starboard bow, it took off toward the east and we never saw it again.
Le Marin
We had initially planned to anchor near Fort de France but were advised against it due to petty theft reports on cruising boats in the area. As a result, we anchored on the south side of Martinique in Le Marin, French for “the Marin” :) Since we had gotten really favorable wind, seas, and currents for twenty hours straight, we got to the anchorage earlier than anticipated. The sun was not yet out but it was light enough to head in and look for a spot to anchor.
Aground
The harbor was a bit crowded with mooring balls and boats and has several shallow shoals. It was early, I was tired, and ultimately making sure we didn’t hit a boat while looking for a spot to anchor, and watching the depth gauge and chart proved to be too many balls for me to juggle. Once I realized that we were headed right for a shoal, I tried to turn the boat around. The wind blew our bow away so I could only turn 90 degrees, which pointed us straight toward a large catamaran. I stopped the boat but couldn’t turn any further…so we ran onto the shoal.
We were stuck hard and could not sail or motor off. The tide was going out, so it would only get worse. We launched the dinghy and I tried to turn the bow but the small horsepower of the engine and light weight of the dinghy made it obvious that it wouldn’t work. Side note: I have since learned that intentionally flooding the dinghy with 5-6 inches of water can add enough weight to possibly solve such a problem. Hopefully I’ll never get the chance to find out. When the owner of the catamaran awoke and saw us near his boat and struggling to get off the shoal he dinghied over to us and offered his help. We attached a line to our halyard (a line that runs to the top of the mast for hauling up sails) and he tied that line to his catamaran and pulled us off. The boat heeled way over and we gently slipped off the shoal and back into deep water. We thanked him profusely and went back out to a less crowded section of the bay and anchored.
Call the Coast Guard
After a couple of days at our spot, the wind kicked up a little bit and I noticed that we didn’t seem to be in the exact spot we had been in. We pulled up the anchor and found a huge rock that was preventing the anchor fluke from setting well; I guess is should be called a Rockna (sorry about the horrible dad joke). Our new spot was fairly close to another boat and after I went to town to get some groceries, the French asshole on it decided it was a good time to yell at Grete and tell her to move the boat. She told him I was away and that we’d talk when I got back. I went over and he had a very different tone and basically offered his advice, but not a command to move the boat. The next morning, the wind direction was such that we were dead ahead of him and he was freaking out. He blasted his horn at us and yelled “I call the Coast Guard” in his thick-accented, broken English. “I call the Coast Guard” is now a daily expression among us and our buddy boats, any time virtually anything imperfect is happening. Toaster getting stuck, I call the coast guard. Rain right after hanging laundry out to dry, I call the coast guard. You get the idea.
We had given our location to refrigeration techs the day before so we weren’t interested in moving until the afternoon when they left for the day. While they were at the boat, the Coast Guard arrived and checked our paperwork, etc. I told them we would move after the techs were done. We moved that afternoon to a spot far away from that guy. Over the next week or so we heard his horn again and saw and heard him yelling at others. He is the maritime equivalent of a “get off my lawn” guy back in the States.
Marin
The town of Le Marin was great for a few reasons. There were several easy to get to grocery stores; a place to get boat parts; several boat mechanics, electricians, etc. who were willing to dinghy out to us at anchor; and two health food stores that sold gluten free foods! We used basically all of the above and ate burgers with buns for a week straight. There were cool sites around town as well, including a beautiful cathedral with a roof that pays homage to the town’s nautical history by being made to look like an inverted boat hull.
We spent a couple of days around town walking with friends and hanging out enjoying french wine at low, low prices. Like other islands, there was some pretty wall art and loads of hills with great views.
The biggest downside to the town was the utter lack of park space for the kids to play. We couldn’t really find a good spot for the kids to play. We dinghied over to nearby St Anne for a beach day but otherwise the kids just hung out playing on each others’ boats or on the sidewalks of the marina.
Fort de France Day Trip
The three crews rented cars for a trip up to Fort de France to see the sites. The main goal of the day was La Bibliothèque Shoelcher, which is a library whose metal frame was originally built in Paris and was then moved over to Martinique by the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher.
The outside of the library was rather attractive and it was a good spot for our three separate rental car crews to meet up.
Inside was a bit disappointing though and with the exception of one small section just felt very run-down and lacked any historical or artistic note, for me.
After the library, we went to Cathédral St Louis. The outside and inside were both spectacular but to me the most impressive thing was the stained glass. Pretty much every cathedral we’ve visited in the islands has had ‘fake’ stained glass where the glass was basically painted on to look the way it did. This was actually stained glass that was soldered together into the ornate patterns and imagery depicting scenes from the bible.
The last stop in town was Chapelle du Calvaire. It didn’t seem like much but it was up on a hill so we decided to walk up there for the view.
It turned out to be a great idea since it gave us a well laid out panorama of the city. Side note, if you are 6’3” be careful when taking group selfies with a 3-year-old. Poor Winnie got her head cut off in this shot.
Château Dubuc
Last stop with the rental cars was an old sugar plantation at the eastern extreme of the island. Unfortunately, with three cars it is easy to get split up. We all grabbed lunch but for two crews that meant finding gluten free food, not always an easy feat.
Grete and I were the only ones with phones so we were unable to coordinate our timing with the others. By the time we got out to Château Dubuc, Magistra had been waiting for nearly an hour. They needed to get back to their dog and as such headed home. Catnip and Sea Horse went inside the plantation grounds and walked around to enjoy the sites. As the day went on, Fira and Eli began holding hands a lot and, as it goes, were a couple.
Hopital
The last bit of our time in Le Marin was tied up dealing with Fira. She had decided to pretend to be a cabbage while stooping on the stairs into the salon on our boat. Her butt hit the step behind her and she face-planted from four feet high or so. Her teeth went right through her lip and there was a lot of blood. We blotted out the blood to get a good look and saw that it was a hole all the way through. It was bedtime, but clearly we weren’t going to have an early night. I called the hospital in Le Marin and was told that they do not see kids and that we had to go up to Fort de France to the children’s hospital.
We took a cab ($150) up to town and spent the next five hours or so waiting, trying to communicate in a mix of my bad French and the hospital staff’s bad English, and getting Fira patched back up with a couple of stitches. She handled it as well as could be expected and the staff did a great job. I asked how and where to pay for services and they were very confused. I was told there was no system set up for them to accept any kind of payment. Score one for socialized medicine. After the cab back home the whole ordeal cost us nothing more than $300 in cab fare and all the emotional and physical trauma Fira had to endure.
So, that was it. We left Martinique and were out of France for the first time in well over a month.
