The Pitons of Saint Lucia are famous among Caribbean sailors and many make the stop in Soufrierre to anchor in their shadow.

After our close friends Nicole and Mark left, we were ready to buy provisions, take our covid tests and clear out of customs so we could leave Martinique and head south. But NO, not so fast.

The tests came back positive so we certainly weren’t going to another country yet.

We isolated on anchor for several days and then retested negative. Whew. Now we can leave Martinique and head for Saint Lucia.

The winds and seas were up but Dragonfly handled everything easily. It was good for us to feel 6-8’ seas and learn how the boat kept it relatively comfortable.

Forty miles later and we were picking up a mooring ball in the shadow of the Pitons.

The yellow quarantine flag stayed up as we dropped the mooring ball in the morning for a 52 mile sail south to our next destination: Bequai in the Grenadines.

I didn’t pick Martinique, she picked me. Rather, we came to Martinique because that is where Aora was located, and Aora soon became Dragonfly.

Once before I’d been to Martinique, though I really hadn’t. A week at Club Med in 1988 is really time at a French hotel, restaurant and beach bar, but there’s no way to learn just how vibrant and welcoming an island and its people are.

The history of all Caribbean islands is familiar: colonized by European powers to develop sugar, rum and coffee crops by exploiting the indigenous population as well as enslaved Africans. Post WW2 many of these islands achieved independence and self rule, whilst a few remain wholly part of their European country or as a commonwealth protectorate.

Spending two months in Martinique was a good primer on the adage that governance matters. Martinique is simply a province of France, just as all the mainland provinces are. And so they benefit from the rule of law, quality education, decent infrastructure (roads, power, drinking water, etc.) and overall a quite good standard of living. The downside is that wages are universally low, the cost of living is quite high, and the global inflation that we’re seeing puts a real strain on the average resident.

But it’s the people that make it such a special place. A mix of black and white, young and old, workers, business owners and retirees. Universally friendly, every single time we walked down a sidewalk we were greeted with Bonjour and a smile. People get along here on this island and we never sensed tension and certainly never felt our safety was at risk. It was common to walk from Dragonfly to the marine store and greet 5-6 people by name.

The food was excellent and we only had good meals. A couple of our best meals were at a beachfront restaurant with sand on the floor and every guest wearing a swimsuit. Most memorable were the sauces, not spicy, just packed with flavor to enhance the locally caught seafood Being French, there were as many stylish, beautiful people here as we saw in Paris.

A friend observed that Martinique is more European than Caribbean – all the benefits of France right in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.

Au revoir mon ami, see you soon.

He does what any prudent captain would do – send the crew up the mast.

We have a large deck light mounted about 2 meters above the lower spreaders. When out sailing a couple days ago we looked up to see the 4 inch diameter bulb hanging outside its mounting bracket and swinging freely, held on by the positive and negative wires.

Once back at the dock it was time to don the bosuns chair. With our dock neighbor Terje of Norway on the safety line, the captain winched Susan up the mast.

The repairs were successful and we were told the view was amazing.

Sometimes you get lucky. A friend in the Amel fleet knew we were buying an Amel in Martinique so he introduced us to the great folks at Caraibe Marine. Dragonfly just spent the past four days cruising the west coast of Martinique and the only way we were able to do this was because of the amazing work and dedication from so many folks at Caraibe Marine

In the late 1980s Philippe Leconte raced in the mini transat single handed regatta in a 21 foot sailboat like the one below – France to Martinique non stop. Crazy!

When he arrived in Martinique he did not have enough money for a plane ticket home. So he stayed on the island and started doing rigging work. Over the past 30+ years Philippe has grown his business to be one of the premiere repair and refit shops, with many customers sailing for two weeks just to have work done by them. Caraibe Marine now has seven divisions and over 50 employees.

Given all the work Dragonfly needed I was fortunate to get to know many of the employees, and it was a little sad to say au revoir.

There were so many other quality folks: Sabine, Bruno, Aurore and Tom in the Chandlery, Pilo and Mavrik at the Metal shop, Hugo in Electronics, and Marcus, Marco and Gerald in Rigging.

Merci beaucoup!

A collection of images from street and boat life around Martinique

It is said that cruising is the art of maintaining your sailboat in exotic locations.

Some folks are more committed to maintenance than others.

Every captain’s nightmare so you better do a project everyday before putting your feet up.

Here are some of the boat projects undertaken over the past 3 weeks while Susan was in Park City.

“I wasn’t upset that I lost my mast crossing the Atlantic Ocean because I gained a girlfriend.”

Now this is a Masterclass in positive thinking. Renault was captaining his Grand Soleil 48 sloop from Gibraltar to Martinique with four additional crew onboard. He was down below on day 5 when there was a very loud bang – racing up the companionway steps he finds a broken mast, sails and rigging everywhere on deck, and fortunately no injured crew.

It’s customary in these situations to get out the electric angle grinder or oversized bolt cutters and sever all of the mast attachment points, sending it all to Davey Jones locker. Goodbye mast, boom, sails, rigging, electronics, insurance deductible, and planned 14 day crossing.

The next step is to jury rig a sail with the whisker poke and any small sails that were not lost overboard. Ration food and water and start a good book.

When they finally made it to the dock in Martinique they were greeted by girlfriends and friends. Crew#1 wasn’t doing so well with his girlfriend at the time but he really hit it off with Crew#2’s girlfriend and off they went never to be seen again. Crew#1’s girlfriend hung around the docks for awhile, got to know Renault the capitaine and now they’re a couple. As he said, if my mast hadn’t broken I’d have never met this wonderful woman.

Obviously the point of the love story is do not wait too long to replace the wires (shrouds) that hold up your masts.

And that is how Dragonfly spent the last two weeks. My Laser had no shrouds, the Snipe 3, the J22 4, the Beneteau 39 6, and Dragonfly 16. So we had lots of time to hear stories of love and woe.

Caraibe Marine Rigging has a well deserved reputation as one of the premiere, most qualified rigging shops in this part of the world. Some boats have been known to sail down from New England just for this project and then turn around and go home

The Saloon A/C wasn’t working when we bought Dragonfly so the seller committed to fixing it.  His local refrigeration guy is named Quentin, and he is beyond impossible to get in contact with.  No email goes responded.  But he finally showed up one day after being relentlessly badgered by the broker. Quentin said he had recently bought a repo’d Open 40 racing sailboat on Guadeloupe and would be gone for about a week to get the boat and start the refitting process.

When I was cleaning out the aft lazarette I came across on old gennaker that had significant UV damage on the leech.  Apparently the prior owner had it on a furler and left it furled for an entire season with no UV protection.  Touching the sailcloth along the leech resulted in tears and more holes.  But the rest of the sail was in good shape, so I offered to give it to Quentin as maybe a cut down gennaker would fit his boat.  He was excited – surely he would be over soon to pick it up.  Well, at least he was consistent: on our fifth planned time for pick up he arrived with a smile.

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Everybody wants roads but nobody wants road construction. Everybody wants lush green hillsides but nobody wants rain. Well, a rainforest island like Martinique sees rain nearly every day and night. Usually it’s a light to medium rainfall that goes on for about 5-10 minutes then blows through; 15 minutes later it’s dry and sunny. But every now and then the skies literally open – the old Texas saying of it’s raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock comes to mind. Well one night after dinner it was a deluge. After running around and closing all of the hatches I managed to get this picture from the companionway hatch.

Later that night it was time for bed.  Ought Oh!  I missed a hatch!!  The one directly above my pillow!!!  Guess I won’t be sleeping here tonight.

An unplanned project was added to the list the next morning.  

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An experienced sailor friend once said that no matter how big your boat is, when the weather offshore is lousy you always wished you had a bigger boat. So just when I start wondering if 54 feet is big enough, a bunch of 32 -36 Junneau Sun Fast sailboats start showing up in our marina. Turns out it’s the Transquadra Regatta finishing in Martinique. I learn from a friend that they race every four years, and go from France to the Canary Islands, leave their boats there for a couple of months, then return in early February for the two week race to Martinique. There are classes for single-handers and double-handers. My friend does qualify her explanation by saying participation is limited as it’s for Old Sailors – you know, they have to be over 40.

One of the singlehanders led the entire two week race but was passed by a doublehanded boat just miles from the finish line.  Two Italians were approaching the cut south of Martinique, almost there, when they saw a squall behind them.  They figured if they kept the spinnaker up they could make it around the point and protection from the big breeze.  The squall hit before they cleared the point, knocking them down and laying them on their side for seven long minutes.  The finish line is just off the Club Med point, so there is some navigating to do for the last couple of miles due to shallow water and a few shoals.  After racing 24/7 for two weeks, one boat arrived in the middle of the night and continued up the channel only to get stuck on a reef.  Requiring assistance from a motorboat to get off the reef, sadly they were scored as Disqualified.

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Just when you think these boats are small to race across the Pond, you come across a 5.8 meter (19 feet!!!) class single-handed race boat anchored in the harbor. There is a reason the French and Kiwis are the best offshore, blue water sailors and racers – a little bit loco in la cabeza.

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Baked fresh without preservatives and stabilizers means the baguettes, croissants and pain au chocolates are really, really good. But it does require a daily stroll to the patisserie.

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Balsa is a very sweet dog. Huge! But very sweet. Hangs out on the aft deck of Django, the Amel 53 tied up next to us. He loves people but his relationship with the cat on the dock can best be described as peaceful but filled with much tension.

When I returned from the Weekend in the Boatyard, Balsa was not on deck.  Inquiring of his owner, it turns out the two of them had also been in the boatyard helping a friend paint his bateau.  They spilled a gallon of anti-fouling paint on the ground and kind of put off cleaning it up.  In the meantime, Balsa wandered over and lay down in it.  Yikes!  The copper and other biocides inflamed his skin under his arms and legs where there is not much hair, so he was still down below recuperating.

Update – two days later and he’s back on the aft deck keeping a watch out for the cat.

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Leaving the Boatyard and entering the main channel we saw this large catamaran aground on a reef. Notice the difference in color and texture of the water directly in front the cat. Every capitaine knows this could be them so it’s a good reminder that just because you See water does not mean there Is water.

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This is the family mini-van.

Just like the American suburbs, everyone has one. It’s used for everything – grocery shopping, exploring, beach trips. All of the cruising guides have the same advice: lift it or lock it or lose it. So every day when you go somewhere, rather than tying the boat off to the dock, we use chain and a padlock. And at night, we either lock it to the boat or lift it out of the water.

Power is really important even on a sailboat. We have 12 very large 100 amp batteries that allow us to run the lights, fridge and freezer, all kinds of pumps and everything else for day to day life. The batteries need to be charged daily and this can be done several ways: plugged in to shore power at the dock, by the main engine alternator when motoring- hopefully not too often, or by the generator when we’re sailing or at anchor.

Another solution is to have a stainless steel arch constructed on the back of the boat to hold solar panels.

The added benefit is we can have davits added to the arch to hold the dinghy.

Previously we add to empty the dinghy, lift the outboard motor off, then use a halyard to raise the dinghy onto the aft deck. We’d then flip it upside down, more of a controlled roll and drop, and then lash it to the deck. This takes close to an hour.

Hauling the dinghy out of the water with the davits takes about 3 minutes!

So off Dragonfly went to the boatyard for Caraibe Marine to do their magic.

The work spanned a weekend and it’s always fun to wander through a boatyard to see what’s going on.