Grockles and white sandy bottoms
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Sat 29 Jan 2011 22:32
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14:30.11N
60:53.168W
As the sun sets on day number three on the feared
east coast of Martinique, we're beginning to wonder why we spent so long in
Marin. We're anchored up in a wide bay behind a huge barrier reef, where we can
just make out the noise of breakers booming onto coral. It keeps the huge
Atlantic swell at bay and means that we're lying in near millpond conditions,
despite an occasionally strong wind tugging at Summer Song through the
night.
Rewinding three days, we spent the night on the
southmost tip of the island on the Plage des Salines. As the only boat there, we
wondered if there was something we didn;t know about the place: it was patrolled
by flesh-eating turtles; huge jellyfish teemed along the shore; or the
mosquitoes didn't stop until they'd shrivelled you up. Happily, there was no
such surprise. We found a Frenchman from St Nazaire in Brittany tending a tiny
shack on the beach which sold water, beer and planteur. Planteur is a rum-based
concoction including lots of fruit juice and nutmeg and it tastes much better
than its distant English cousin, the rum punch. While we sipped our drinks with
the sun setting behind Summer Song, we heard from Doug the Breton that turtles
nested on the beach and that numerous big hotel chains wanting to open resorts
on the beach had been sabotaged from doing so by the locals.
We left the Salines at dawn and set off into the
wind round the south of the island. Still somewhat traumatised by our very
sploshy sail up from St Vincent in 30-knot winds, we nudged cautiously out into
the open ocean that runs between St Lucia and Martinique. The waves built up
quickly, but not calamatously, and we were soon scudding along with two reefs in
25 knots of wind. We had to tack several times round the bottom of the island to
weather a number of reefs but after about five hours, we were able to slide in
between the barrier reef and the shore where the water was much calmer. From
there it was a short run in to a perfect hurricane hole called Petite
Grenade.
Despite running slightly aground on sand as we ran
in between banks of coral, we found a good, sheltered anchorage and settled down
for an afternoon of snorkelling. The water was murky with weed and silt,
though, so there wasn't much to see. It was Alex who spotted that we'd anchored
almost on top of an ancient looking lobster pot, covered in coral and without
any sort of buoy to mark it. Closer inspection revealed a dozen spiny lobsters
caught inside and a huge porcupine fish - one of the deadly puffers, whose
viscera can mete out a certain and painful death to unwary eaters.
After an hour of poking around, I figured out how to extract the lobsters without losing fingers. They only swim backwards, to keep themselves facing their enemy, and will shuffle straight into a net held behind them. If you whirl this round in the right way, they get stuck and then can't clamber out once its held out of the water. I caught four this way, which we promptly barbecued. The puffer we caught, then released back into the mangrove lagoon. Despite pulling a very pitiful face indeed from the bucket on deck, he slipped away into the murk without a backward glance. From there, we made a short three mile hop around the corner to another well known anchorage at the Baignoire de Josephine. This is a mythical stretch of waist deep water between two islands, which glows turquoise with the sand on the bottom. Here Napoleon's bride-to-be, Josephine, was supposed to have whiled away her privileged days as an estate-owner's daughter. Now, of course, it's full of grockles. We buzzed in to the shore in Jemima (the dinghy) and were welcomed into a 30-strong grockle-fest, presided over by an amiable dark-skinned local in a white admiral's uniform. For €15 a head we dined in regal style, overlooking the beach, on fish soup, grilled chicken, lamb, fish and pork, rice and kidney beans; then more ice-cream than you could shake a palm frond at, banana flambee, coffee and lashings of rum. This repast was accompanied by some exceedingly wayward singing from a neighbouring table. Had less rum been consumed, these might have passed muster as rugby chants. But it just confirmed for the umpteenth time that grockles, no matter where they're from, like to drink a lot and sing. Had they been Germans, these would have been songs about beer. As Frenchman, however, they were singing about Eric Cantona. "Cantona, Cantona... quand on a une gueule comme ca, on se tait et on reste
chez soi."
Roughly: "Cantona, Cantona... when you have a face like that, you shut up and stay at home." We have not yet seen so many lobsters on South Beach as we saw that
afternoon. Later, we waded out in Josephine's Baignoire and the skipper caught a
sole. This was not so much a feat of wit over fish; it was more a process of
attrition. After pursuing the poor beast for about 20 minutes, he ran out of
puff and tried to disguise himself, yet again, as a patch of sand. Look away for
a moment and he melted into the seabed but when you knew where he was, his
outline was unmistakeable. As he tired, he stopped more and more often and I
could get closer and closer to him. By the end, it was possible to grab the
fellow by the tail and drag him back to the dinghy. He is being eaten tonight as
a starter, despite Alex's reservations, and will I'm sure be excellent.
We spent the night tugging at the anchor in strong winds, with seas
breaking close by over a shallow rock. It was a quiet night, however, despite
being in the lee of a little island inhabited only by a huge, friendly
doberman and his skinny owner, both hidden away in a one corner of a huge
rambling house, boarded up like the Bates Motel.
Today has been fairly busy. We put ashore at Le Francois, realising it was
the last chance before Dominica. The locals were astonished to see a sailing
boat sliding into their small fishing harbour and had no idea what to make of
us. After a few false starts, one of the fishermen beckoned us over to a pontoon
where he was waving a hose. Despite Summer Song's usual fickleness in going
astern, and the extremely shallow water, we manoeuvred alongside and filled up.
With the sun beating down and a gentle wind blowing, we then had one of the
most enjoyable sails of the Caribbean leg of our trip so far. We tacked out of
the bay between coral banks and made for a deserted island called Loup Garou.
Fringed with coral, it seemed to be boiling above the surface of the sea on
foaming breakers. Yet, just as we anchored up 100 yards from the shore, a bevy
of grockle ships appeared out of nowhere and started howling and taking photos.
Happily they didn't dare drop the hook, and soon sidled off. We claimed the
island as part of England (or Luxembourg, depending on whether you talk to me or
Alex), then jumped back abaord and carried on to Le Robert, where we have
anchored up near another 'fond blanc' (white sandy bottom) in the shelter of an
island. A predatory herd of jet skiers who were racing each other up and down
the bay have shoved off, leaving us once again with the noise of distant
breakers in the background.
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