Sunday 13 May: Another day of full activity. Do we ever rest? Not likely!
First thing, we check out of the marina. 260 Euros for 7 nights including electricity. Very good value for such a nice marina. In the Med you’d be lucky to get 2 nights for that much. We also do the customs check out, as we plan to leave Martinique tomorrow.
Then we set off in the car to see the last unexplored coast on the SW corner, by Pointe du Diamant. It’s another glorious day with clear bright skies.
The Anse du Diamant is just 30 minutes away and renounded as one of the best beaches on Martinique, backed by lots of holiday lets and AirBnB’s. The beach is indeed long and pretty, but like so many other beaches, the water is spoiled with the Sargasa weed, making it a dark brown colour. Not in the slightest enticing to swim in.
At the far end of the bay, in Anse Cafard, we find a memorial to a slave ship that ran aground here in 1830 killing all the crew and most of the slaves, who were still chained inside the hull. The memorial is in the form of multiple white figures looking out to sea in a very somber way.
Here there is also a plaque to the English Captain Hood, who cheekily landed on the Diamond Rock, just 1/2 mile from Martinique shore, then armed it with cannons which they fired at any and all passing French ships. So much history on this island.
Last stop is the pretty beach of Petit Anse d’Arlet, where we have a pretty poor coffee on the beach, then head back to the marina.
We return the hire car …a few hours late, oops, but Sunday the office is closed with just a key drop, so they won’t notice we kept it a tag longer than we were supposed to!
It’s 1pm now. We have 1 hour to leave the marina.
Glen pops up the mast to fix the new wind transducer and swap genoa halyards. He finds being right at the top of the mast a little unnerving, especially as the wind is very gusty today.
As advised, this time the wind instrument receives copious amounts of self amalgamating tape covering the whole connection. Plus it also gets tied on with thin rope. Hopefully no water gets in this time. And of course, now that we have a spare, this one will probably last forever!
Then it’s time to leave the marina. 7 days seem like a long time. Even our lines that go to the mooring buoy are going green!
It’s going to be very tricky to get out of the berth. We had gone bows-to which means we have to reverse out in a strong cross wind as well as finding our way through the line of mooring buoys that are only about a beam’s width apart!
We persuade the marina assistant to pull us with his dinghy with a line on our stern, to stop it swinging with the wind. As he tugs, we slip the bow line and hard in reverse …. and Cloudy Bay slips out, exactly between 2 buoys. From our neighboring yachts, the maneuver all looked very skillfully executed, but we know it was certainly more luck than skill!
Next stop the fuel dock. We top up with 250ltrs thinking it’s only 0.70Euro per litre, as Glen had previously seen on the pumps. But when we get charged 1.24 per litre we discover the other price is a tax free price for commercial vessels only. Ooph! … you win some, you lose some.
We say goodbye to La Marin as we gently sail out with genoa only. Feels like we have managed to get a lot done here. Certainly it has the best services in the Caribbean that we have seen so far, and, above all, everyone was so very friendly and helpful.
We are almost sad to leave. But as soon as we feel the wind in our hair again, and the cooling beeeze through the cockpit, we are glad to be on the move again.
We only go 2.5 hours around the coast, then stop in Grande Anse just as the sun sets. Great live Spanish music comes from the shore as we have our very late lunch in the cockpit, and we feel suddenly relaxed.
We’ll have an early night here ready for a passage direct to Guadeloupe tomorrow.
In the evening Glen gives the water maker a cleaning cycle with chemicals. It’s made over 10 tons of water since we renewed the twin membrane elements in Majorca last October. So it’s time for some TLC.
Then to bed, with no aircon on … just the lovely breeze blowing through the boat again. Wonderful.
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