Le Marin, Martinique – early to mid December 2023

Rain, rain and more rain… plus a dose of total incompetence…

We were very pleased to be in Martinique. We could get everything we needed and eat well plus stock the whole boat up with affordable supplies (this is not easy in the Caribbean). The weather, although warm, even reminded us of home – it rained pretty much all day, every day for much of our time there (well, we are still here as I write and it’s not raining now). After a few days of heavy tropical rain, we were considering whether there was any rain left in the world, when all of a sudden the sun showed its face… what a relief, our shy yellow friend in the sky was still there. Of course as soon as that happened, it was hot!

Martinique, this time, has taught us that we have nowhere near enough solar on Stargazer and we need a rain catcher to feed the water tanks. The latter will be entrusted to the mate who I’m hoping can construct some suitable fabric ‘thingy’ that I can attach a plumbing fitting to which can be led via a hose into a tank. Plenty of people catch rain water and (as long as you are away from grubby shorelines and there is no sand in the air) it should be as pure as pure can be… we’ll keep you posted on that one.

As for the solar issue, we’ve decided to up the size of our solar panels which are permanently fitted to the aft rails and place one of the existing ones on deck when we are at anchor. This should give us around 320 to 350 watts maximum in place our meagre 150. It’s quite interesting to note that due to long daylight hours in summer and the fridge not having to work quite as hard that we had fewer power issues with solar in Poole Harbour than over here. The work, will, of course involve more wiring, another controller etc etc, but any boat owner knows how it goes… The mate is aware that it wouldn’t be easy to up the solar wattage much more and still look aesthetically pleasing. There are a lot of boats around with solar arches and panels all over the place, that, quite frankly make their boats look like some contraption out of Mad Max, for those old enough to remember the film…

The only sensible place to do this work is St Martin, so, the loose plan is that after Christmas the mate and I will take Stargazer over to St Martin where we will do all this and also fit a small bimini so the mate doesn’t melt on passages. I don’t like biminis (or solar arches, come to that) but I do like the mate and so can’t see her melting in the heat (which is not good for her temper either, ha ha). Luckily on our way to Le Marin, I saw a lovely classic yawl and what attracted me the most was an elegant, small bimini – much like an English gentleman’s sun shade. I made a sketch of it and have decided that I could make one the same for Stargazer, the added bonus is that it would be removable.

We’re nearing the end of our stay in Martinique for now (today is the 15^th December) but I will mention the utter incompetence of the mooring staff this time. Here’s the general gist:

We’d booked our mooring for two weeks.

I emailed the office asking for up to one week more. I heard nothing.

The mate called the office, who said, “fine, no problem”.

A mooring ‘lad’ came over and asked if we were leaving. We said “no, we’ve just booked another week”. “OK that’s fine” was the reply.

Shortly after that another mooring ‘person’ came over and said we must leave immediately as another boat was coming in two minutes. Said boat was then put on a mooring behind us. We were told the mooring chap would return at 1700 to move us onto another mooring. He didn’t show up.

Two days later, another mooring person showed up and said we must leave by 12 noon. We explained to him that we had booked for longer. “It isn’t on my records came the reply… and if you speak to the office you must ask for a confirmation email at all times”. After protracted discussions with his office he insisted that we move to another buoy.

Where was this buoy? I’ll tell you, it is the one directly ahead of us and is exactly the same as the one we are on…

The mind boggles – but I’ve said that before in these blogs J

I’ve been told to go – the mate wants to buy more fizz for Christmas…