We visited Martinique briefly 5 years ago but we had no time then to visit the windward coast. This is the coast facing the Trades and as the name suggests is usually windy, but much of it is protected by extensive reefs that mean the sailing is fast but the seas flat...at least in parts. However, to get there there is a hard slog to windward. This means that very few cruising boats and virtually no charter boats ever visit the numerous beautiful and enclosed anchorages.

We were keen to go there as we visited this east coast 33 years ago and wanted to revisit some of the places we had been to then. The weather was good, with a bit of a lull in the rather boisterous winds we have had most of the time. We visited 4 anchorages, 3 of which we had to ourselves including the appropriately named Baie des Anglais.

Once through the reefs and inside Baie des Anglais it was like an inland lake, quite small and completely surrounded by mangroves with oyster encrusted roots. The water was totally still and there was not a sound apart from jumping fish and the mangrove birds. This is an excellent hurricane hole, the sea could not even be seen from our anchorage.

The highlight though, as it was all those years ago, was the Baie du Tresor. This is a truly idyllic spot, now a nature reserve. It occupies a peninsula, Presqu'ile de la Caravelle, sticking out into the Atlantic with the nearest road a mile away. Hidden away as it is and difficult to enter without today's navigational tools, it is said to have been the haunt of buccaneers, with hints of buried and sunken treasure. When we came here in 1982 it was with the skipper up the mast eye-balling the reefs and shouting steering instructions, definitely more exciting.

Although we believe that now there is a regulation suggesting anchoring overnight is not allowed, our French can be a bit of a handicap at times.... so we did.

In any case the bay is so deep and sheltered and the beach so steeply shelving that it is possible to tie to a tree on shore (with a stern anchor to keep one off). As you can see we had the bay to ourselves, although there were a few locals who had come on foot to share our isolation. Smooth tree clad hills surrounded us, the beach straddled below and across on the other side mangrove spread thickly into the water margins sheltering crabs and with roots like giant fingers digging into the shore line sand.

As well as the entrance, the bay itself is heavily reefed. The only real disappointment was that the reefs were not as good as we remembered. Sadly this has been true right through the Caribbean. Whether this is a result of human interference, bleaching , hurricane damage or something else we do not know. The locals complain of damage from tropical storms but there does appear to be regeneration of the corals, a slow process of course.

However, there were some nice sea fans and these strange red fingers

Head down to the wind