There is no doubt that Martinique is a popular spot not only with the French, but yachties of all nationalities.  In Ste Anne,  the bay just round the corner from where we are anchored there are over 100 yachts at anchor.  The ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) finishes in St Lucia, and this is the next decent anchorage to the north and it would appear that some ARC yachts have taken root.  Having paid Chay Blythe the princely sum of £500 for the priviledge of crossing the Atlantic with a pre-ordained departure and destination one gets the impression that the numbers (sailing by ….) run out after arrival, but non ARCs love to mock and doubtless Chay Blythe is doing very well out of it.  We are still sitting behind the reef where we insinuated ourselves last Saturday so you could be forgiven for thinking that we had taken root too.  However you would be wrong because on Tuesday we sailed 20 miles round to Anse de Mitan on the south side of the Fort de France inlet.  The main purpose of this was to meet up with AlShaheen another new Mike Pocock designed yacht slightly smaller but very similar in many ways to Troubadour.  We had never met John and Sheena but had spoken to them many times on the radio both when crossing from the Canaries and since arrival in the West Indies.  They started at the southern end of the chain and are moving north and we, having done the opposite are now crossing with them.  We had a great evening swapping details of our favourite places over a meal ashore (11 euros per head).  After a ferry trip across the bay to Fort de France we retraced our steps passing Diamond rock for the third time in a week and had a brisk beat to windward along the south coast of Martinique returning to our hideaway behind the reef.  It is an ideal spot to do a few chores, and so while Chris has been resuscitating the varnish John has been catching up with a maintenance backlog.  It all sounds horribly familiar as it is not too long ago that John left Derriford to remember that most hospitals have maintenance backlogs as a way of saving money.   Our excuse is just idleness.   Anyway we are more or less back on an even keel and are planning to leave Oriole in the marina at Marin and hire a car for a few days to do a little exploration ashore and hopefully give our walking apparatus a bit of exercise.  While we have been sitting here one of the new massive float on float off yacht transporters has arrived in Marin and has disgorged about 25 sailing yachts and three large motor boats. 

These have all come from Europe, and the cost for transporting a yacht of Oriole’s size is about £10,000 which makes Chay Blythe’s sailing by numbers look good value.   Mock not that ye be not mocked; we had better watch out as the sea has a habit of finding your weaknesses, and we have still got to get out from behind this reef and safely into the marina!   We do however, we think, know our limitations and we have drawn the line at heading for Panama and the Pacific which is exactly what Troubadour has done this week so we will be keeping in touch with her progress with a daily radio contact.