Anse Mitan, Baie de Fort de France

After a lengthy stay we finally slipped our mooring in Le Marin at 1020 on Saturday 22^nd February. We keep saying that we like Le Marin – and we do – so leaving was with a little sadness; although cruising is like that, you have to leave places you are fond of to go somewhere else, which you may be equally as fond of but just don’t know it yet.

We chose the 22^nd as the forecast had been for a good few days of lower swells and less strong gusts. Why then, when we were en route to Diamond Rock (a south western point of Martinique), did we see a huge squall coming? Quite frankly the whole year has been like this, so it was no surprise, but even so, after so much patience we did feel a tad short changed. The squall passed us by with only about 27knots and we passed Diamond Rock and hoisted the main as we had been dead downwind under full genoa until then. With a reef in each sail (I’m beginning to think you need a perma-reef in the Caribbean) and some gusty conditions we sailed past Anse Chaudiere and both Anses d’Arlet, none of which looked to hold much appeal in the dark and cloudy conditions. We decided to head into the Baie de FdF and head for Anse Mitan which, according to my passage planning, had very good holding and was a lovely anchorage, bar the small ferry that comes in creating huge wash and rolly conditions as it does so.

As we rounded Cap Salomon and headed into the baie the wind was ‘on the nose’. No surprise there as we’ve passed the baie a couple of times before and there has always been a strong blast of wind directly out of it. We had Stargazer set up pretty well* and we were proud of tacking nicely in towards Anse Mitan (*except for a small ‘school boy’ error, which I will not talk about because a lot of people reading this will know that I was an RYA Yachtmaster Instructor for many years (and I’m not telling either! – Mate)). We arrived in Anse Mitan and anchored perfectly in very good holding. As an aside, we are pleased to report that our new engine battery and its installation performed perfectly.

It is now Monday 24^th February and it has rained since our arrival… I was looking at options for moving over to FdF itself for a few days before moving on, but the mate said ‘non, we must stay longer’. When I asked why, it emerged that she had all the details of the FdF carnival to hand and it goes on for quite some time. As the mate loves carnivals it would be, shall we say, imprudent of me to argue.

So we will look forward to a week or two over in the City anchorage at FdF and go from there.

But, it has to stop raining first…