Martinique

Salamander
Sat 6 Jan 2018 00:01

Back to the lovely Saint Pierre and we try to never think of Grenada Marine again. It's so pretty here and we are quite relaxed, but we have a number of boat repair issues. Less than a day and we both feel calmer, just chilling watching 2 pelicans on the next boat and a flock of egrets (or ibis) flying about.

Checked in at the restaurant at 11.30, we arrived late the night before. Murray helped a local fill in the French clearance form in French so he was bought a beer and the grateful hostess bought Caroline's Coke and people were dancing to music while checking in, so very, very civilised. Eating French cheese, drinking wine and so on. Leaving Grenada Marine is like a massive load has been lifted from our shoulders.

2 weeks of R&R, beautiful wrecks, a revisit to Mont Pelee, the fabulous Habitation Depaz and a new visit to the slave memorial overlooking Diamant Rock. Forty slaves and 6 slavers lost their lives as their ship went down in this rather dangerous by.

statues

statues

The rock itself, 175m high, was held by the British who hauled cannon to the top to sink French ships (not the slave ship). Anyway, after 17 months of grief, the French arranged the wrecking of several boats filled with cargoes of rum and then dead drunk, the British gave up (apparently).

We chilled forever, but could not put off sorting out the boat repairs any longer. In any event, two boats had already tried to hit us and we rescued a French boat which broke its mooring (not that we even got a thank you). The other drifter was rescued by the boat next to us. Tenders were bizarrely tied and locked across the steps so that only their crew could use them. A man refused our help when he fell out of his own tender and couldn't get back in to it. We idled about as he swam and swam about, fully dressed, before giving up and going to the beach. No idea how we managed to keep straight faces.

After about 10 boats proved unable to anchor next to us, we decided we really had to go.

Murray rather sadly insisted Caroline took this photograph; he is caressing a mermaids bottom: not a real one as he cannot swim that fast. The merman statue is a great face coming out at you from the sea bed.

mermaid

merman

These new sculptures are very popular with snorkellers.