Joana's Yarns: Martinique

The next stop on party caravan north was Martinique. Our first port was Marin, which we had not been to on the way south early this year. The anchorage was a little tight and the water unswimable, but the town was cute and is a big yacht center so it has all the supplies one could want. From Marin we sailed about 15 miles to Grande Anse d’Arlet. We had stopped here on the way down and fell in love with it. It is like a little Riviera with bars and restaurants lining the beach flying their colorful umbrellas. Unlike last time, we did a ton of diving…got to love it when the only cost to doing an unbelievable dive is an air refill ($7 Euros) since we have our own equipment. Brandon from Sol mate even talked us into doing a night dive. It was awesome! The visibility on all the dives was 80-100 feet and the reefs were beautiful with bright, neon colored coral and tons of fish. We must have seen 30 eels, a few octopus, brain coral with all of its feelers out and luckily no sharks!

We next hit the big city Fort de France and stayed there for two nights before continuing up to St. Pierre. We explored St. Pierre for a day and then decided to boogie as we had been there before and wanted to keep moving. But of course, we didn’t leave before buying two cases of 3 Euro wine, brie and baguettes!