Leaving Antigua - passage to and arrival in Martinique 14:28.18N 060:52.16W

Despite the fact that the mate and I quite like Antigua, it was time to head south - hurricane season fast approaches. We weighed anchor in Falmouth Harbour at 0900 on Monday 13^th May and headed out to sea. Our original plan was to head south in short, manageable, day hops. However, this required a multi-day weather window and, as regular readers of the blog will know, this doesn’t seem to be the year for such luxuries. Having seen that Monday 13^th and Tuesday 14^th were (although not ideal) the best forecast we’d seen for a very long time, this made us decide to do the 190 NM passage to Le Marin, Martinique in one run, sailing overnight. Our passage plan gave around 1600 on Tuesday 14^th as an arrival in Le Marin. Well, not quite Le Marin, but St Anne which is a very large anchorage outside the harbour. The reasoning here was that Marina du Marin had already told us that all moorings were taken and the marina may or may not have space. Having been to Le Marin twice before, I decided that working out what to do once there would take the best part of a day so St Anne it would be for our first night.

Now, being a little, shall we say slightly cynical, I doubted that the Marina or moorings were completely full. What I did know was that Le Marin was more French than France is and although the UK and France have a pretend love/hate relationship we all like each other really. That said, trying to explain things to French speaking marina staff could prove tricky so, being lucky enough to have two superb French friends I enlisted the help of our good friend Alexia. She was to call the marina, explain that we needed to come into a mooring of some sort and that we would be there on Wednesday 15^th. We left it at that and focussed on our sail down there…

Having done comparatively little sailing over the last few weeks, a major run down the Caribbean Sea involving three channels between islands wouldn’t be easy champagne sailing. The first part of the passage was down to Guadaloupe, the seas were beam on and the wind on the beam. Stargazer was happy romping along at over 7 knots and we were soon in the lee of Guadaloupe where the wind came and then went and came and then went. In the plans I have the advice is to sail within two pistol shots (you can tell how old my guides are) of the islands lee, or stay 21 NM out to sea. The latter was not really an option as it would have us so far to the West that it would have been difficult to crawl our way back East against the formidable Atlantic swell when nearing Martinique. The former didn’t appeal as at night there are lobster pots and local fishing boats around not to mention the odd outlying rock, so 5 to 10 NM it was. Having cleared Guadeloupe, we headed out across the Dominica Channel. The mate was on watch for most of this as we were using our tried and tested watch system. I slept very little in my three hours off watch and was awoken at 0200 by the mate who had managed to organise a nicely reefed headsail on her own (not easy). As I climbed into the cockpit I saw that we were doing over seven knots under double reefed sails and that a squall was approaching us. Great, I thought, no sleep and then thrown into this ‘witches cauldron’; luckily the squall was mostly just rain so all I did was get quite wet. I can assure you that Caribbean rain, at night, seems just as cold as rain does in the UK. It probably isn’t, but it does seem like it.

Once passed the Dominica channel dawn broke and Martinique came into sight. The northern end of Martinique is very high and subsequent gusts fall down the sides of the hills keeping you on your toes, but as we’d experienced this before we were ready for it. Passing St Pierre the wind eased to almost nothing until we were adjacent to Fort de France (the islands capital, which is a kind of Paris of the Caribbean – we must go and check it out as rumour has it that you can sit in a café on a street corner and forget you aren’t actually in European France) when the gusts came through the gaps between the hills. Sometimes, I’m pleased that I did a lot of inland sailing when I first started sailing, insomuch as I remember being on Lake Windermere one gusty day and sailing closed hauled for 360 degrees – much the same passing down the leeward side of Martinique!

Once past the Forte de France area we passed the Anse d’Arlets. These are quite pretty bays and considered staying in one of them for the night, but given the forecast for the following day and having enough time, we decided to press on to St Anne. On the final part of our sail we had to motor sail and we were both holding our breath at times that our previous fuel cleaning job was as good as thought it was. In the end, the engine sounded superb all the way to St Anne, so we were very pleased that it had been as successful as we thought. Although there was some bad news, the rod kicker (holds the boom up, Stargazer has no topping lift) gave up and the flapping leech on the genoa was too much to bear. The genoa has never been quite right, despite being a brand new sail when we left the UK and if allowed to flap and flog like this, it would ruin the sail.

As luck would have it, Le Marin is one of the places where you can get things done, albeit at a price. All we have to do now is find the extra £££s to do it…

Motoring into St Anne, we spent a relaxing night in what is one of the largest, busiest but also nicest anchorages we’ve been to. On the morning of the 15^th I ‘pleaded’ with the Marina du Marin to find somewhere for us, our friend Alexia did much the same and by 1630 we were actually berthed stern in next to a French live-aboard family and near the Boules area in a quiet part of the massive marina.

As I write now, 18^th May, we have already replaced the gas spring inside the kicker, which is good news as the mate can’t have the sun shade up without it. We’ve also ordered the stainless steel tubing that I need to make the mate’s bimini and booked the genoa into North Sails. The latter I did after talking to our UK sailmaker. Opting for an expensive repair/alteration is preferable to having to replace the whole sail – especially at Caribbean prices!

We have a fair amount to do here in Le Marin, which will involve car hire etc. The only question is when to do it all as France being France, there are two bank holidays next week – c’est la vie…