Saint-Pierre

February 15^th, 2014

Enough of ‘vibrate’ cities..

We had our eyes set on a nice boring seaside village as our overnight stop on the way to Guadeloupe. Saint-Pierre.

Gosh! It rains a lot in Martinique.

It’s a good job this is the dry season.
This place is wet and this opinion comes from a couple who spent 40 years living in England! ..and this is not the wet season remember.

Every cloud has a silver lining. In the case the silver lining has to be the number rainbows. We have to see 3 or 4 every day.

Rain means ‘green’ lush vegetation and crops.

So there is NO excuse for a lack of flowers and fantastic vegetables around the place.

So where are they in Martinique?

Saint-Pierre turned out to be a very popular anchorage in a wide bay along the seafront. The shore line has a rapidly deepening ocean bottom and so boats sort of line up all along the edge and try to grab hold of the shallower parts. If you try to anchor too far out then because the seabed drops rapidly the anchor doesn’t set too well and can drag. This was the case with a French flagged catamaran near us.

Within 20 minutes of leaving their boat for a trip to the shore we saw them rush back again to retrieve their drifting catamaran. The crew must have left non-sailors onboard as the passengers were standing on the deck as the boat drifted.

Again, the village seemed a little tired and we couldn’t help thinking that for the number of boats at anchor where were the beach cafes and restaurants? I’m not ‘into’ tourist meccas but just one beach café would be nice.

But! We had an excellent and very well priced fish lunch at the only ocean side restaurant in the village as we watched boat after boat arrive and find the smallest spot to anchor around ‘Timeless”. 

I can’t help it. 

I then worry about our anchor chain being covered by another boat’s chain and the potential stress of sorting it all out when you go to leave.

Whatever, this was a nice anchorage.

We left for Guadeloupe at 2pm. It was going to be a 100 mile night sail and we were looking forward to a reasonable distance to sail!

I think we have to return to Martinique and give it another shot. We were left with giving it a only a ‘6 out of 10’ score – “..could do better” but something tells me there is more to it somewhere.

..as we left Saint-Pierre heading north we encountered a major ‘round the island’ sailboat race. We of course passed everyone we came across.
They were sailing south.