Martinique - Pas d' soucis

We spent the first few days after arriving in Martinique quietly in the marina ‘Le Marin’ in the south. We take it easy, drink ‘Ti Punch’, rum with sugar cane syrup and lime, and eat out without having to cook in a heeled boat first.

A few days after our arrival, we rent a car and take Stefan to the airport. It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to him, as he spent 5 weeks with us on MIRABELLA and sailed the entire passage across the Atlantic. Joséphine and Chloé also grew fond of him during this time.

We then spend the evening on ‘Presqu’Île Caravelle’. The Caravelle lighthouse showed us the way the night before we arrived in Martinique. Now we want to visit it by land.

We watch the surfers at Tartane on the ‘Plage de l’Anse l’Etang’ and eat a fine meal. With the kids sleeping in the back seat, we head back south. The next morning we make another short car trip to Saint-Luce, where the fine ‘BAM beer’ is brewed. Unfortunately, the brewery is not open that day, so we spend our time on a small playground and jump into the Caribbean waves on the beach.

The people are incredibly nice, and whatever you ask or say, they say ‘pas de soucies’, which means ‘don’t worry’. Here, everything is a little more relaxed and without worry.

We have no worries at the moment and are still very tired. We have just crossed the Atlantic and are happy but also tired. Still, now that we are here, we made it! Along the way, we were more tense than we might have admitted and certainly more tired than we realised. Since mid-August, we have sailed more than 4,500 nautical miles and raced from northern Italy through the entire Mediterranean Sea to Martinique.

We have to admit that it was quite exhausting to spend 20 days at sea with our two small crew members. After a little maintenance work on the ship and engine, we decide to move to the anchorage immediately outside the bay after the days in port and not move too much yet.

This is a good and, actually, easy decision. We already heard in the harbour that there are many family boats at the anchorage of Saint-Anne. We get to know ZOOK at the gas station as well as the family on BLUE JUICE. So just before Christmas, there is a joyful arrival in Saint-Anne. The first time we go ashore, we hear our mother tongue at the dinghy dock and get to know the crew of SIMA, who have two girls the same age as ours and who have just managed their own passage.

These days, around the holidays, the family boat group chat is running hot on WhatsApp, and almost every day there are gatherings and BBQs on the beach. It’s nice to see how happy Joséphine and Chloé are to be able to play with other children on the beach. From time to time, turtles appear around our anchorage to breathe; they are impressively big!

Luckily, the ‘Christchindli’ (Swiss equivalent of Santa Claus) also finds us in Martinique, and so there is a little bit of Christmas celebration on MIRABELLA. We got a Christmas bauble with Santa Claus in a hammock between palm trees and some glitter garlands for Christmas. The parade in Saint-Anne is a merry bustle of the local dance group and a couple of nice old cars with a bouncy castle on the main town square.

On December 25th, we get to know nice families at the BBQ and then celebrate New Year’s Eve with three families together. We are invited to the catamaran ELLA of a South African family, where we welcome the new year with ZOOK from Jersey and FLUX III from Denmark. We spend the first days of the new year visiting the beach, visiting other boats, receiving visitors, and making provisions. We know it’s going to be more expensive in the more northerly islands of the Caribbean, so we’re stocking up again.

We stay at the Saint-Anne anchorage for two weeks until we feel ready to set sail again and have the energy to move on. We head west together with FLUX III past the ‘Rocher du Diamant and around the corner into the bay of ‘Petit Anse d’Arlet’. In this beautiful place, we snorkel and spend time with our new friends. After two nights, we are drawn to a buoy in a bay further north, the ‘Grande Anse d’Arlet’. We snorkel, hike, and have aperitifs with the families of ELLA and ZOOK. These two boats have two boys each who are all a bit older than our girls, and yet it’s a great bunch.

After two nights, we decide to move a little further and meet the Danish family from FLUX III again in ‘Anse Dufour’. Five-year-old Vega comes to play with us, and Joséphine likes to hop over to her ship. It’s all the better that the parents also like to spend time together and manoeuvre the dinghy back to their own ship with sleeping children late in the evening—fortunately it’s not far!

‘Anse Dufour’ offers a lot to see: we watch pelicans diving into the water to catch fish and turtles underwater. We also observe a near infinite number of tourists who are let into the water by excursion boats for 15 minutes with life jackets and full-face diving masks that are then collected after the loud honking of the horn. The bay is well frequented. In the quiet moments, we snorkel and marvel at the moraines, boxfish, and intact reef. The neighbouring ‘Anse Noire’ is also very pretty.

Actually, we wanted to skip the capital, ‘Fort de France’, but decided to anchor for a stop. It’s a good place to stock up, and we’ll need new hiking boots and a diving mask for Joséphine too. There, we spent two eventful days and nights at anchor, rocking around in the ferry waves. The city is interesting and consists of very different parts. We take the dinghy up the ‘Canal Levassor’ to the vegetable market and are photographed by the locals. Apparently nobody else ever takes a dinghy up this canal. After visiting the vegetable market, we sail up another canal where we spot iguanas—a highlight! We spend the evenings with the boat friends at the park and playground and even discover a ‘Chilbi-Bahn’ - what joy!!

Our next and final stop in Martinique is the former capital, Saint-Pierre. However, in 1902, it was completely buried by the still-active volcano ‘Montagne Pelée’ in just 10 minutes. Here, we visit the zoo together with our boat friends in the pouring rain. That too is part of the Caribbean: every now and then there is a rain shower, but it usually only lasts 30 seconds. But you still get wet as a paw. We visit the market in Saint-Pierre and buy fresh vegetables, fruit, and always a ‘Shrubb’, a liqueur made from tangerines, oranges, and coffee, a perfect aperitif. We enjoy the time together with ELLA and ZOOK with a music evening, eating together, and all kinds of activities in and on the water. Kids and adults alike love to be pulled behind the dinghy with the surfboard or foil.

We experienced a wonderful start to our stay in the Caribbean in Martinique and were able to totally relax.