14:26.1N 60:53.1W

Wed, Thurs, Fri & Sat – 11^th, 12, 13^th & 14^th Dec

On Wednesday morning we left the anchorage in Le Marin and pottered round to St Anne which is a nice shallow bay with clear blue water next to the small town of the same name.  We found ourselves a nice spot and the anchor set perfectly into the firm white sand at the first go and we settled down to enjoy the swimming and the more relaxed atmosphere here.  We were also able to make water without difficulty and had a very pleasant afternoon and evening.  We went ashore in the afternoon to discover that Wednesday is either early closing or just a rest day full stop, so we were not able to access the internet café or very much else.

Thursday and Friday followed similar patterns although we did go ashore and find the place to be a bit more lively now. The internet café was at least open, but insufferably hot inside and rather exposed to the frequent rain showers outside!  But it was fast and cheap and so we had no complaints. The market and fish market were non-events and the whole place does rather have the air of a once rather more chic venue.

The swimming is pleasant but not at all interesting, so we took the opportunity to clean Serafina’s waterline instead.

With some strong winds forecast for the weekend, we had planned to head back into Le Marin on Friday and get ourselves well dug in with the anchor in a good spot again. Not that we like being there, but there are good shops and the wifi is a whole heap better. But we had also been watching boats coming and going over the past few days and formulated a plan that was based on what we thought was the usual pattern of boat movements. We had sensed that many boats left the Marin anchorage around the late morning and the rush to fill the holes occurred in the mid-afternoon, so our cunning plan was to leave the St Anne’s anchorage around 1100 hours and make our way back.  But like all good plans it was a pile of poo and we sat all morning watching a whole succession of yachts arriving from St Lucia and from the northern end of Martinique and heading up to Le Marin. More to the point we had seem almost none coming out of Marin so our plan now lay in tatters!  Then just for good measure a ‘Dockwise’ ship arrived loaded with super yachts it had just brought across the Atlantic from the Med. So we abandoned the idea and opted to remain where we were. The holding is good and we have plenty of food on board and the bakery in St Anne is good, although decent fresh fruit is still a challenge.

On Saturday morning we chose to head off ashore at 0700 hours and walk over the hills to the beaches we had read about on the southern shores of the island. It only took about an hour to get there, strangely walking through a landscape more typical of northern France than its tropical counterpart, and we were rewarded by finding the most stunning beaches – probably the best examples of what most people would imagine the ideal Caribbean beach to look like. Long stretches of soft white sand with stunning clear blue water, palm trees and no-one in sight.  Mind you it was still early in the morning and the handful of basic beach bars, set back in the trees had not yet opened.  But it really is idyllic and being French, there are fresh water showers available although the less endearing feature of anything French, was the very basic and unpleasant toilets…..

We took the very scenic and much longer coastal walk back to St Anne and this was energetic and interesting in equal measures.  We met a lovely group of elderly French ladies along the way, one of whom was as eager to try out her rudimentary English as I was to attempt to converse in French. As usual this ended in much hilarity and very little exchange of useful information, but it had been one of the more engaging and human moments here on Martinique.

We were back on board Serafina pretty much in the nick of time as by lunchtime the promised blow arrived along with the inevitable torrential downpours and so the afternoon was spent largely opening and closing hatches in an attempt to balance the need for a cooling breeze against being flooded out.