I slept outside as usual, whenever I can get away with it. It had actually stopped raining for 6 hours straight, so I slept peacefully out there. The sunlight sparkled through the misty clouds at 7AM. Mary Jo likes to wander around at anchor, but she hadn’t bumped into any of the numerous boats surrounding us here in the azure waters of Anse D’Arlets, Martinique. The green mountains came down to the ocean, and there were colorful houses perched on the steep slopes. I could hear someone playing a piano in one of them, and the faint sound carried through the still bay.
The anchor wasn’t set very well here, because the seafloor was rock hard, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving Mary Jo alone for too long. We have to go find a better anchorage. The church bells rang at 8AM from town, we had some coffee and pulled up the anchor. It rained right as we got moving, and then another squall hit us right as we were anchoring again about a half hour later. The rain does that around here… The squalls seem to usually hit at inconvenient times…
But that’s okay, we left that pretty bay and motored a short distance around a rocky point of land, over to Grand Anse. Here was a sweeping, sandy beach with a green mountain backdrop. Sparsely inhabited, there were many sailboats in the bay, but the area was huge. This is the town we ate at on the beach last night. Lets get another meal! More ice cream and coffee!! We dropped the anchor in about 30 feet of water which is deeper than usual for me. I got in the ocean and dived way down there in the bright, clear water, and moved the anchor through the turtle grass to the sand. I set it where I wanted, it probably took about ten deep dives though. Very enjoyable.
This anchorage was perfect! Spacious, the anchor is secure, great view, no ground swell. Of course it rained right after we had packed up, after we had shut the boat, packed my backpack, and were about to climb in the dinghy to head to shore. So we waited it out, and then motored in. Of course when we got to the beach the rain came back! It poured and soaked us right before we made it to the shelter of the restaurant. Then it stopped as we sat down… “The Maddening Mist of Martinique!” This is what I started calling it, a “maddening mist” because it’s been doing this a lot since we left Dominica, just short little bursts of rain every hour or so, right when you are trying to focus on something else. Or when you are vulnerable to getting soaked, which is what happened to us as we were busy locking the dinghy to a sea grape tree.
The beach restaurant was crowded under their awnings, Dad and I were barefoot, and soon they turned on these swamp cooler type air conditioners that sprayed mist down from the ceiling all over everyone! Maddening mist!! Can’t escape it. This actually felt very nice. Our lunch was absolutely awesome.
So we started walking, to find a grocery store. We walked the half hour over to Anse D’Arlets, and the walk was so beautiful. The mountains were very lush and green, the sidewalk was open and peaceful, not too much traffic. The place was idyllic. I even read a little tourist sign somewhere that had the history of the place. It’s a commune, and it’s always been pretty far separated from the rest of Martinique. The grocery store in the town was closed however.
Oh hmm, well… we had passed one very small convenience store, and we decided we would get that on the way back, after we saw our options. If that was our only option then our resupply won’t really be very good today… The bus was too difficult to take anywhere, because we actually were really far away from any big town. To get to Le Marin or Fort De France we would have to take the bus somewhere and change busses. And getting back here would be challenging too, multiple hours of bus riding! Unfortunately since we had taken it easy all morning, we had wasted a lot of the day…
We figured we would walk to the next town of Petit Anse. Google said they had a small grocery store. We passed the church, which was open and very ornate inside, and then we started climbing the road out of town.
It was steeper and longer than we thought! It was actually a huge mountain! And at the top it started to rain. Then it just dowpoured, there was no sheltering from it. We walked in the pouring rain, as the road steeply descended through rainforest jungle, then the road climbed up yet another mountain! The rain never stopped, it slacked off a little at times and then would pick back up to a raging downpour. So we walked in it for about 2 hours.
Now it was nearly 4PM, and we were in the little village of Petit Anse. It did seem like a very wealthy area though, and there was not too many people around. The houses were quaint, and isolated on these slopes above the rugged bay. This bay was too rough to be a good anchorage. A lot of houses had food growing in the yard, like avocados, pomegranates, soursop, breadfruit, papaya, I even saw a huge dragonfruit cactus-vine. It had a few bright pink dragonfruits ripe on it. How nice, this area seemed to me like a place that people from France have established to escape the downfall of society and hide out in this luxurious paradise.
But there was no grocery store here. There was a restaurant on the beach that looked delicious, and there was supposedly a store. But the rain which had stopped briefly came back, right as we were asking someone directions and trying to communicate in French. Which was hard but I could do it! By the end of the day I suddenly got good at it. “Avez-vous un supermarche ici, en Petit Anse?” Simple as that.
“Non,” they would say. Well we found the supermarket, and we sat under a bus stop sheltering a heavy blast of rain. The store was closed. Bummer… Now it’s late and we don’t really know how we’ll get back. Oh I screwed this one up! We went too far and didn’t accomplish our simple mission of finding groceries. We should have gone to Le Marin, ah, but, no, it was too tough to sail there. We should have done something differently, like take the bus, however we had no Euros and had not found an ATM to get them. So we couldn’t pay for the bus anyway! One even passed us as we walked back, and we couldn’t get on because we had no cash.
Alas, before we walked back, the rain cleared. Then the woman who ran the store and her son walked up, opened the doors and opened the store! Wonderful! We went in. The market had a very small selection, just a couple onions and potatoes and I bought all she had, which was 3 onions and 2 potatoes. The rest was canned and packaged food and we got a few meals like pasta. It was also a bakery though, and she had fresh baked baguettes and pastries! Wonderful! We bought 2 baguettes and a bunch of nice pastries like guava tarts.
And we walked pretty far back, with no more maddening mist, and I stuck out my thumb! At some point, a guy who had passed us while I was hitching turned around and came back for us! He was a very nice French guy, didn’t speak much English but we practiced our communicating. He dropped us off in Anse D’Arlets, because we had one more possible convenience store to visit. We got eggs there. The walk back to Grand Anse was very nice again, we met kind hearted locals who we had a fun time communicating with, and they gave us a breadfruit! And we met more nice people in Grand Anse.
We went back to the boat, unloaded the groceries, and then went back to shore for coffee and ice cream, as well as making more friends with the locals and speaking more French! After that we relaxed for the sunset on the boat. Of course right as we set up our cushions outside to do our “story time”, where I’m reading a book out loud for us, the maddening mist comes back! So we move inside, I wouldn’t get to sleep outside tonight.
…
In the morning we hauled up the anchor and went for it. Something had changed… Well, the weather forecast was showing a change. It was August 5th, and all through July the wind had been strong. It was actually going on it’s 7th week of this weather pattern, those maddening misty squalls all the time, and strong winds in between. Today the wind was light, and yet the air was clear of Sahara dust as well. The forecast was showing perfect sailing weather for as far out as the prediction showed in the ten day forecast.
As we went into the ocean, I could feel that something changed. The weather was absolutely beautiful and lovely. The waves were small, the wind was gentle. The cloud formations were still there, and then there was ONE more squall, a very small baby one, and after that… no more came.
Pretty soon the wind was gentle and perfect, as Anse D’Arlets and Diamond rock receded into the distance. The next island in the chain, St. Lucia, was getting closer. This was great sailing! And not beating into the wind either, just reaching along with it, going fast and relaxed. A hurricane must be forming. That’s what this serene weather is signaling to me, like I could feel it out there… Hurricane season is here, and as long as a hurricane is spinning out in some part of the ocean very far away, it seems to deliver us with good sailing weather.
And Martinique is the the most windward of all the windward islands! That means… That we have been beating into the wind, working our way through the island chain to Martinique. From here, the rest of the way to Grenada, is downwind all the way. So we will blow there much more easily.
The hard stuff is over I think… Now it’s all gravy.
…
That sail to St. Lucia definitely was. We arrived at Rodney Bay in the afternoon. Dad knows this place very well! He spent 6 weeks here doing repairs with his step father and mother, on their boat back in 2003.
I knew Rodney Bay as well. I had been stranded here for a week or two in 2015, camping in a ditch along the highway, looking for a sailboat to hitchhike on as crew. I wound up joining on a large, dysfunctional yacht, participating in an around-the-world “race” called the Arc, which was just a safety net for rich people on sailboats to travel together. I suddenly was going to a lot of fancy catered parties! (And I spontaneously ditched the yacht and the Arc race at the Panama Canal.) But I got to know Rodney Bay at that time.
Neither of us actually felt a strong desire to go to shore. We hadn’t been caught by customs in Martinique, and we weren’t messing with customs here either. But, we needed to go to shore. There wouldn’t be any wind along the coastal mountains of St. Lucia or St. Vincent, and we would need more diesel to make sure we had enough to motor as far as we need. We’d also grab a couple more groceries why not, and we might as well take a stroll down memory lane!
We anchored out in the bay somewhere. It was very spacious and felt very free, but there was plenty going on onshore. Multiple beach resorts with rows of palm trees, an enormous marina in the distance. Jet skis and small powerboats zipping around in the cloudy turquoise water that was actually pretty dirty when I went to check the anchor. But it was a good spot!
Before long a crazy little boat came up to us. I had never seen anything like it in my life, a very small boat, covered by an awning of thatched palm leaves, with vines and plants actually growing throughout! He had a little baby papaya tree onboard! That was cool, the boat will filled brimming with fruit and produce! And the rasta man was chillin in the shade, surrounded by fruit, baling seawater out of the boat as it sloshed around.
So we definitely bought fruit from this guy. We got a huge pile of fruit, tomatoes, mangoes, avocado, etc. Some of it was a little rotten, but some of it very good. Dad said he remembered this guy from 19 years ago, the guy said he had been doing this business for 25 years. All organically grown by the guy’s mother, and not very expensive.
Now we got our produce, this would actually be a great spot to spend time and properly resupply. That’s ok… We had planned to avoid it because St. Lucia is a little crazy. There’s a lot of hustlers and people can be very in your face. This was all pre-covid, 7 years ago, I had met many crazy and desperate people in St. Lucia. We weren’t planning to mess with this place these days.
But we did! Had a great time. It was a long dinghy ride into the marina that we had both been to once before. The dinghy motor completely crapped out. We got it started and it crapped out again! It wasn’t getting us there. We did have the oars this time if need be. The motor is a Tohatsu, and it’s logo is an ornate “T” emblem on the motor’s shiny, fat little head. So we had been jokingly calling it a “Tesla” and it hadn’t been treating us too well. We now named him Elon. That really stuck. Oh Elon… he tries his best but just can’t get us too far.
A young local dude in a fast dinghy was passing us and offered us a tow! It was very nice, he brought us really far. Dad handed him $20EC for that, which is about $8 dollars. Then we were in the luxury marina, a huge yacht club with tons of services where people gather from all over the world! We both knew this place, it had been a long time ago for both of us. We wanted to crash the pool area with the showers, and I wanted to crash it even more badly after our trip to the gas station. Because I had brought our 6 gallon diesel jug, filled it, and didn’t close it properly. We walked back from the gas station with me carrying it in my big backpack, and it leaked all over me. Made a real mess. Not the first time that’s happened… But we couldn’t crash the showers, they were too well guarded by the security in this place.
Oh well! Let’s go. We kept our day moving, just like we had done the last few days as well. No rest for the ever weary! Having tons of fun though. We dropped off the diesel jug in the dinghy and went to the grocery store, which seemed to have been bulldozed since I had last been there and replaced with a huge, modern store! I definitely remember it being a very small grocery store. Not anymore. What really tripped me out though… Was as we walked the sidewalk down the highway from the marina, I looked for the spot I had camped back in the day. I wanted to show Dad the wretched place I had spent 4 nights with spiders, cockroaches, and wild dogs, as I searched for a boat/crew job at this marina. The bushes I had camped in were gone, being replaced by a huge parking lot and an absolutely gargantuan, luxury hotel, many stories high with ornate blue and gold architecture. Wow! That definitely wasn’t there!
This place seemed to be wealthier than I remember it being 7 years ago. And the locals were staring at smart phones and well dressed. St. Lucia seemed to be doing well, at least this neighborhood was… But this was always the rich neighborhood.
Elon ran fine for us on the way back, and the serene weather we had throughout the day produced an incredible sunset. One half of the sky was black with dark clouds over the mountains, and the other half was clear with pink and orange clouds swirling through. I didn’t take a picture of it, just sat and enjoyed the ride, then got this picture of Mary Jo.
…
The morning was beautiful, and we left Rodney Bay. We cruised down the coast of St. Lucia. It had rained a lot at night, and there was tons of debris in the calm water! We passed towns and forests, steep, green mountains and gorgeous scenery. But there were large towns, different resorts and many developments. This place was like a combination of Dominica and St. Martin! A sacred, natural paradise land like Dominica, that’s full of services and cities like St. Martin- overbuilt. As we cruised through the water’s just offshore, floods had filled the water with debris. We were dodging big logs and sticks, coconut husks, and general plastic garbage. There were places where streams poured out into the ocean and brought trails of silt and debris. But we had seen other places, like in Guadeloupe and Dominica, where it rained very heavy, and we had never seen debris in the ocean like this before. Maybe, we realized, that by strip mining and developing the rivers and waterways, they’re creating more erosion here in St. Lucia. So that’s why it looks like this.
Then we passed through an area with a distinct line in the ocean where a bunch of pollution started. It was scary and a bit disgusting. The water was suddenly bright yellow/brown, like a chemical spill. Or oil. This was surrounding a giant oil refinery, where we could see the land by these storage tanks was black. We looked at the place through binoculars. The rocks and grass, even the fences up to the water’s edge were black and coated with sludge! We eventually got back to cleaner water after leaving that far behind us.
Then we saw small tour boats, zipping along one by one, always going the same direction. We passed by a famous resort there, Sandals, built into the mountainside. And then we saw a waterfall, free flowing off a cliff into the ocean! How beautiful, all the tour boats were driving close by it. Then there was another and another.
And then… there was a peninsula, and behind that was the Pitons. We saw them approaching into view. They were absolutely spectacular.
We had been looking forward to this, and it was possibly the best scenery in all the Caribbean. They are twin volcanoes, the smaller one being an extremely dramatic spire. Beside them was the village of Soufriere, although looking in binoculars it looked a lot bigger than a village these days!
From there we turned out to sea. There was still no wind. But I knew it would come.
We motored out, watching the Pitons as they turned and changed, and grew farther away. Then I felt the first whisper of wind. Very shortly after that we shut the motor off, put the sails up and began sailing in the absolute peace of the shimmering ocean, with the breeze ever so faint.
But it was only 10 minutes or so before the wind filled our sails and we cruised out into the blue.
Next was St. Vincent, it wasn’t long before we were halfway there. Well it actually took a very long time, hours and hours, we travelled 50 miles today! But the time almost ceased to exist out there today, it was so sublime. We listened to music, watched the waves, relaxed, chatted. Then we were watching the booby birds. They swoop and dance between the waves. Then they catch a fish! They’ll leave for a while and come back hours later for their next meal.
Sometimes as Mary Jo cruises through the water she sends flying fish jumping airborne in all directions. The boobies show up and follow us, snacking on those. They are such powerful fliers, it felt like I could watch them forever as we closed in on the massive volcano of St. Vincent.
That volcano was just so beautiful though. It was almost MORE beautiful than the Pitons, which were disappearing into the faint horizon. This mountain was a massive cone, but really a monster of a mountain, absolutely huge and symmetrical with ravines like wrinkles slicing through it. Like a glowing, faceted emerald, every shade of brilliant green and rising into the white clouds. Then the dolphins showed up, and they were jumping alongside us.
In my mind, I remember a few of the most beautiful days of my life, and this had become one of them. A rainbow opened up in front of the volcano, as the huge cumulous clouds danced around it in the late afternoon light, unleashing rain here and there. The rainbow just got better and better as time went on. We closed in on this dream-like land, St. Vincent, or somewhere anyway. Somewhere very special, very sacred. This is nature in all it’s glory.
As we got closer we could see that the volcano had recently erupted. This mountain is called “Soufriere”, I know that name is really overused… There’s a Soufriere in Montserrat, Dominica, St. Lucia and here, and I believe it means sulfur. This volcano had actually erupted in 2021! Just last year! It did a lot of damage to the area, a lot of people had to move away from the town we were going to anchor front of. I heard this town was covered in two feet of ash last year. This was the first bay we would come to that was suitable for anchoring on the north part of St. Vincent. It also had an awesome view, so I was excited to go here. The town was called Chateau Belair.
It was very clear where the eruption happened, the deeply green mountain was black and grey ontop, a huge crater where all the trees had been obliterated, and there was even a massive dark grey gash, cutting the top of the cone in two and carving through the mountain to the sea.
This place was so magnificently beautiful though, Dad and I were really blown away as we approached Chateau Belair. The rainbow stayed with us for 3 hours total, all the way until the sunset.
When we got there, we were greeted by 3 people on standup paddle boards. The “boat boys.” One very young dude, probably about 12 years old, another kid closer to 18, and an old man. Javed, Camroy, and Fitzmore. They showed us where to anchor, which was helpful because the place was so extreme. There were two catamarans in this anchorage, and hardly any more space before it dropped off to very deep water all around.
We gave the trio $5 EC each as a tip, but didn’t need any services from them. Camroy chatted with us, welcoming us to the island. He was very joyous with a huge smile, and I noticed all three of them had perfect teeth. Interesting in this place, St. Vincent is a third world island and Chateau Belair is very remote, they probably don’t have much for dentistry. It’s hard to imagine… But they don’t have processed food either, these people eat fish and mangoes right from the land. This place is very natural, this paradise, and I feel like it’s somewhere that many people will never see. But this place felt very real, very awesome and wildly beautiful.
It also is amazing to me how different each island is from the next. As far as Martinique, St. Lucia, and St Vincent, they are like three completely different worlds. Martinique speaks French and is peaceful and organize, St Lucia is more loud and an independent, urbanized, English speaking nation, and St.. Vincent… Also an independent nation just more remote, quieter, the land is rugged and untamed.
The guys paddled away as the sun was setting, and we enjoyed our evening. Just behind the boat was extreme terrain and massive cliffs rising out of the ocean. It was all covered with a forest of coconut palms, growing by the coast and on the cliffsides. The top of the ridge was lined with the green palm trees into the distance. We were hooked on our book, so as it got dark we did our story time ritual as always. And Dad always falls asleep on me!
So we went to bed, and I slept outside in the moonlight, under the shadow of that powerful volcano.
