First mate here. We are on anchorage at St.Anne in Martinique and it is pouring with rain, so our trip ashore has been postponed. The first few pictures are in St Lucia, Pete is buying fruit, then Debra and Paul from Jayjay and Stuart and Liz from Finnrose. In the picture of the Rodney Bay anchorage you can see a thatched hut which is actually a great restaurant, art gallery and book exchange.

Back to Martinique.Graham and Dianne from Maunie are here having some work done, good to catch up with them. We have been to Fort de France, the capital, on the bus, great service again. The building that looks a bit like a church is in fact Schoelcher library – he was responsible for the abolition of slavery in Martinique – the statue is of him.

On Sunday we were going to dinghy along the coast but the weather wasn't great. However we explored the edge of the marina instead and discovered dozens of egrets perched in the mangroves. We then dinghied up Canal O'Neill, which was not a canal but a small river through a mangrove swamp. It was lovely, a bit eerie when there was a big splash behind us – are there crocodiles in Martinique? In the picture of the roots there are loads of crabs, very well camouflaged.

The next day we tried to hire a car but despite the fact there are six car hire shops, no cars were available.

We had an interesting exit from the marina yesterday. As we left our berth a sailing school with ten boats roped together was heading straight for us. Pete had to take evasive action and get up speed quickly. This meant that we were moving too fast and ended up going aground in the very shallow water right in the middle of the bay. We went into reverse and luckily moved off the mud. We were going all of two miles to the anchorage but in that time the wind got up to 40 knots! As we started to anchor at 30 knots, we swung very close to another boat and had to go quickly into reverse to avoid a collision.

The food is pretty good here, being a French island. Last night I cooked duck breast that I rubbed with St Lucian lemon pepper spice, then cooked in the Remoska over roast potatoes. Lovely, with our last bottle of wine from Las Palmas.

The last picture is of yole sailing. There is a week long round the island yole sailing event in July, must be quite spectacular.

Tomorrow we will sail around the coast to Grand Anse d'Arlet.