After two weeks on the open sea, we were excited for a bit of coastal sailing with Ballin and Katherine, the amazing snorkelling that the Caribbean is famous for, and, well… also rum punch!
BIENVENUE EN FRANCE!
We’d sailed across an entire ocean to somehow arrive right back where we started, in the EU. Martinique is a department of France, and therefore part of the European Union. It was humorous to get a text from my phone provider when we picked up signal saying, “Welcome to France!” I consider it a bonus to have started our Caribbean journey here. They take Euros, which we still had left over from the summer, and have a plethora of amazing bakeries, meaning we could celebrate with pain au chocolat and fromage friand (google translates this as “cheesy cheese” – it’s a delightful pastry). I was happy to have a chance to practice French more, too, as my language skills definitely got pretty rusty over the summer!
We’d managed to snag a spot in the huge marina at Le Marin, on the SW end of the island, and gave ourselves four days to relax, celebrate, re-provision, and also try to fix a few of the more pressing things that had broken during our Atlantic crossing (shower leak, etc.). Many beers were consumed, followed by many early bedtimes as we all tried to catch up on sleep! I think we may have gone to sleep as early as 19:30 a night or two… or at least I did. Man, I could not stay awake to save my life. Even coffee didn’t help! (Aside on this: it turns out, that is probably because I hadn’t noticed the coffee we had was decaf. I’ve spent weeks trying to work out why coffee doesn’t help me stay awake anymore, and literally only noticed the “decaf” label when we hit January…)
GOOD EATING
While we treated ourselves to fresh fruit and veg when we got to Martinique, a stock-take revealed we didn’t need to do anything in the way of topping up on other food following the Atlantic passage. Turns out we’d overprovisioned in Lanzarote by a factor of about two, so the starboard aft cabin was still entirely full of crates of food. And drinks. We finished the Atlantic still with 10 bottles of gin, 20 of tonic, at least 15 litres of wine, and a couple of crates of beer. I’m not sure what math we did when we were buying all these drinks. But frankly we were delighted – its very reassuring to have a good stock of G&T. Plus, wine is expensive in the Caribbean, so this too was a very happy result! We did however feel compelled to buy some rum; we thought it would be rude not to. Funny thing about that though is that we never seemed to be able to make a bottle of rum last more than one evening – I think they must sell their bottles with holes in the bottom
Having excess food wasn’t as much of a surprise, because, due to seasickness and stress on the crossing, we’d all eaten far smaller portions at meals than anticipated. So, in an effort to try to clear some space on the boat, we continued making meals that we’d planned to have on the Atlantic but hadn’t gotten to.
As you might expect, we’d picked the tastiest sounding meals to eat while on the ocean, so what we had left were the slightly more unusual selections. My favourite of these was Katherine’s Beef Biscuits. This recipe had been chosen from the Y2K website (a sort of doomsday, world-might-end relic left over from the turn of the millennium), because it only required canned goods but still had meat in (corned beef) and we didn’t want all veggie meals for the passage. I’ll spare her the worst of the details, but it went wrong early on because Katherine hadn’t come across the type of can that corned beef comes in before. You need a weird key thing to open one, and it’s not immediately obvious what the method is. As such, the opening mechanisms on both cans were quickly broken. We don’t have a normal can opener on the boat (pretty much all the cans we got in Europe had pull-tabs to open then, so it never seemed necessary). So… the only method left to get into the corned beef was hack saw. We all thought this was hilarious, though I’m not sure Katherine agreed at the time!! Despite this initial setback, the meal turned out to be absolutely delicious and Ballin, Alec and I all agreed we’d happily have it again any time. But I think Katherine was far less convinced (there was much muttering of “never again!”) since, in addition to being hard to get out of the can, corned beef is not the most attractive before its cooked into something!
Remembering this story reminds me that I was mistaken in my earlier paragraphs. I forgot that we did actually buy some “fresh meat” (quotation marks will explain themselves in due course) in Martinique, not just fruit and veg. One of the other meals left over from the Atlantic was Ballin’s Shepherd’s Pie (really a Cottage Pie, and yes we did have a long debate about this because, well, it seemed important at the time). But, Ballin hadn’t actually remembered to get any meat to go in his pie when we’d provisioned in Cape Verde. Luckily, land meant we could just grab some at the supermarket. Ballin and Katherine kindly did the provisioning run in Martinique, though were dismayed at the prices of meat. That is until they noted some beef that was discounted – just the thing! It was only when Ballin approached the end of the cooking process and we were tasting it that the truth emerged.
Laura: “What exactly did you buy?”
Ballin: “Well, just the beef that was on sale! I figured getting the cheap cut didn’t matter”
L: “But what did the label actually say?
B: “Beef sale”
L: “Do you mean boeuf salé?”
B: “Errr maybe. Does that not mean beef on sale?”
L: “Oooooooh. Nope, that would be “salt beef.””
We did our best, but it was so unbelievably salty that sadly most of the cottage pie had to go to the fishes!! To be honest, while I could spot that it was salt beef, if I’d been cooking, I don’t think I would have clocked just what level of saltiness that entailed. I might have rinsed it, but I bet I would still have chucked it in without a further thought. Are any of our readers more well acquainted with French food? How is it exactly that one is meant to use salt beef? It is quite cheap, so it would be nice to figure out how to cook with it. Are you supposed to soak it beforehand?
SPECIAL NIGHTS AND WILDLIFE
Enough about food – lets talk turtles! I love sea turtles. They are such beautiful creatures. They are relatively rare, so when you spot one, its so exciting. Normally it goes something like: “hmm that’s sad, there’s a huge piece of debris over there. What is the world coming to with all this pollution in the sea? Wait. That debris has a head. And now its swimming away… TURTLE!” We were fortunate to see quite a few turtles in Martinique, which was a special treat and we were so happy Ballin and Katherine got to see them while they were with us!
In our quest for these lovely creatures, and after four mosquito-filled days in the marina, we were all keen to get on to anchor and go snorkelling. We picked out three anchorages that looked promising and set off to make the most of our time in Martinique. Night one, at Anse a l’Ane, gave us access to a very pretty town on land, but the water was actually rather murky. There was a little pontoon in the bay from which ferries, dinghies and military ships came and went every few minutes at pace, which was probably stirring up the sand and making for not a lot to see. Despite this, we had a wonderful evening watching the sunset, blasting music and playing games. The privacy of being at anchor is one of the best things about it – if you park far enough away from other boats, you can scream and shout (hey, sometimes a game of Trains gets heated!) and still not bother anyone, which is ideal.
While beautiful sunsets in idyllic bays are pretty great (I mean… I guess), we were on a wildlife quest so the next day it was off to stop #2. We pootled 5 miles back south to Grande Anse d’Arlet, which is a lovely, wide, well protected anchorage surrounded by a pretty beach that’s dotted with a couple of restaurants. Here, we hit the jackpot! The crystal clear waters were chock full of colourful fishies, a cute little squid, starfish, and… turtles! We spent the afternoon swimming and exploring before heading into land for a sunset beach walk. This led to discovering that one of the little restaurants on the beach did pizza (winning!!) so we decided to stay for dinner overlooking the bay. It was an early one – the restaurant closed at 19:30! – but we were starting to like the early bedtimes and subsequent early rises. It means you can make the most of the daylight! The next morning Alec, Ballin and I couldn’t be bothered to go snorkelling again, but Katherine did and was rewarded with a 5x turtle sighting! Something about early birds and worms I think…
We would have loved to spend an extra night in this very special bay, but we needed to keep making tracks south. Ballin and Katherine had a flight to catch in St. Lucia in a few days, and shortly after Alec’s family were due to meet us there too. So, we motored back down the coast to the very bottom of Martinique and the enormous anchorage at Sainte Anne. Its an unusual spot – I’ve never seen so many boats in one area! Sainte Anne almost blends into the neighbouring anchorages around Le Marin (where the marina we stayed at earlier was), and the whole area is boats, boats, boats as far as the eye can see. But the great thing about this is that the town is really well set up for cruisers, with a nice big dinghy dock, customs facilities, and a number of waterfront restaurants and bakeries. Plus, all the boats didn’t seem to put off the turtles, who could be seen throughout the day nosing around the anchorage. Bliss!
We went in to check out from Martinique customs (which you can do 24 hours in advance of leaving – a helpful trait shared by most of the Caribbean countries) and took the opportunity to explore the town. After loading up on French pastries, we happened across a local ice cream place and had to stop in. What a gem – all homemade and so many unusual and indulgent flavours! Apple crumble, peanut butter, roasted pinapple, espresso… it was heaven. We got to chatting with the owner, who explained that he’d grown up in France but got tired of his office job and the city life. So, a few years before he’d sold everything, moved to Martinique and started this ice cream parlour. He loved the simpler, slower pace of life and seemed a very happy man. It reminded us of why we’d chosen to do this crazy boat adventure . Perusing the shops in town, it felt like a lot of the people of Sainte Anne shared similar stories to the ice cream man, which gave the town a really happy, friendly vibe. Definitely a place you could spend a lot of time!
B&K’S FINAL SAIL
All that then remained of our passaging with Ballin and Katherine was the short hop down to St. Lucia. We were headed to Marigot Bay, a small inlet on the western side of the island where we were due to meet Alec’s family and spend a week on land. It was a c.35nm sail, with the wind on the aft quarter – meaning an easy broad reach. We had a gorgeous day for it, sun shining and a fresh wind carrying us at 7-8 knots towards our destination. It was a perfect way to wrap up sailing with Ballin and Katherine – ending on a high note!
We enjoyed seeing our friends / foes the flying fish again as we got out into open water. The boat scares them up as it goes along, which this time also attracted a couple of big sea birds looking to capitalise. We think they might have been a type of booby, but it was a little hard to tell. Whatever they were, they were very cool and so much fun to watch! They would swoop along right next to the boat, waiting for some fish to jump out of the water. When they saw one they liked, they would acrobatically flip and dive into the water after it. They had a very successful run of this, and were clearly having a wonderful time. It made for great entertainment, especially because they came so close to the boat. Sometimes I was even worried we might run into one!
It was an easy sail down and we were all still feeling fresh as we neared Marigot Bay. So, when a Portuguese-flagged boat (that we later learned was sailed by an Irish family – odd?) overtook us, clearly heading to the same place, the race was on! We snuck ahead at the last minute going into the channel and were very pleased with ourselves as this meant we were then also first in the queue for assistance docking at the marina. Suckers. Ha! We aren’t competitive people at all…
BACK ON LAND
Now settled in the marina, we had two final days with Ballin and Katherine before they were due to leave. It was a perfect spot to end, because the marina is part of the Marigot Bay hotel complex, which gives you access to their huge pool (complete with swim up bar) and facilities. The hotel has four bars, each of which has a different happy hour, so one could really do quite well if one were so inclined of an evening!
This is where we first encountered the difficulty with happy hour ordering, a challenge that has been following us around the Caribbean ever since. The standard happy hour is 2-for-1, but it is not clear how to order and we were constantly having to clarify exactly how many drinks we hoped would eventually arrive at the table. Pro tip: we’ve since worked out that you ask for “one order of X” – which gets you two glasses of X. I’m telling you, life is tough out here with all this math.
We capped off our final night with Ballin and Katherine with a special dinner at Julietta’s on the hill overlooking the bay. We were the only patrons for the night, but the food was none-the-less amazing (coconut shrimp, conch, all the good stuff!). We probably overate a tad but felt we’d earned it after crossing so much ocean together!
It was really hard to say goodbye to Ballin and Katherine. They were already two of our best friends, but doing this crazy trip with them had further cemented and built our friendships in ways I could scarcely have hoped for. It was hard to think of not having them around all the time, and I might have shed a tear or two when their taxi finally came to take them off to the airport. I’m so grateful that they said yes to our proposal to do the Atlantic together, and am always, always going to treasure these memories!