Martinique – Fort de France

A short motor south gets us from St. Pierre to Fort de France where we drop anchor right behind the Fort walls. I would never have guessed how large the city of Fort de France was. This is by far the largest city we have been in since leaving the USA.  Since we sidestepped around Pointe a Pitre we may have missed a comparison but none the less this is impressive.

The view towards the city centre

Ferry terminal in the foreground

No shortage of condos!

The fort we are anchored behind is still today an active Naval base for France and as such, sections of the fort are inaccessible as they in use by the military.

This anchorage is also about location location location – we are located in the heart of the old town with a beautiful view of La Savane - a huge park with towering Imperial Palm trees. 

La Savane - Imperial Palms

The other major plus is that they have a dinghy dock that one doesn’t require mountain goat skills and footing to scale up!

The area is about 10 square city blocks of park, shops, restaurants and bars. Again we are lucky to have our first visit on a day when there is no cruise ship in town. This daes make for a much quieter and enjoyable walkabout.

Old Town with new apartments

Old Town

Old Town

Park in front of the Arts Theatre

Reconstruction under way

The Market

We took advantage of a large Carrefour grocery store that was within a short walk to buy cheese, wine and delicious cold cuts and of course a baguette or three! 

Martinique – St- Pierre

 Our sail from Roseau Dominica to St-Pierre, Martinique was a delight! The winds were favourable. It is interesting how the wind and seas behave when you are in the lee (protected side) of an island. We left Roseau and the winds were almost calm – not even worth putting the sails up. By the time we reached the end of the island the wind had picked up to 15 knots steady with gusts to 20 and seas reached what was expected – 8 to 10 feet. Ambition with a reef in both the genoa and mainsail heeled at 10 degrees and scooted along at 8 knots and at times almost 10 surfing down the backside of the larger swells.

Arrival in St Pierre

Five hours after leaving Dominica we were in the bay of St. Pierre. The guide book and Active Captain ( a social media driven cruising database) both mention how difficult it is to anchor in St-Pierre.  The water is very deep right close to shore and there are very few sandy spots in which to ensure the anchor has a good hold. The beachfront is almost 2 miles long and we slowly made our way down the beach trying spot after spot without success to get a a spot we liked. Finally found one and set the anchor, just to be sure I jumped in with mask and snorkel – it was OK but not great – decided to chance it so we called it done!

We left Ambition and headed into town to clear in through Customs and do a little bit of shopping. In true French style, we cleared customs by using a computer terminal in a restaurant to fill in all our particulars about the boat and our passports – printed out the sheet, the owner then signed and stamped the paper and bingo we are now free to wander about Martinique!  What a process!

Off to the store to find some baguettes, cheese and wine which has become quite a staple on board yummmmm!

Waterfront buildings

Church under reconstruction

Back into the dinghy and back to Ambition – OH NOOOOOOO, she is nowhere near the spot we left her and in fact she is only 200 feet away from another sailboat. This is NOT good. Fire up the engine, and immediately start to retrieve the 150’ of chain that we had laid out on the bottom.  The hunt resumed for better spot. Further down the beach the water is only 20 feet deep instead of 35 so we try again to get the anchor to hold. This time it works like it should do and after a quick swim, Maryse confirms in fact that the anchor has all but disappeared into the sandy bottom – ahhhhh we will sleep well tonight!

St-Pierre  is at the base of Mt Pelee  and was where the French settlers killed off all the remaining Caribe Indians. The story is told that before the last Indians were slaughtered, they uttered horrible curses asking for the mountain to take revenge. St-Pierre was the original capital of Martinique and in the early 1900’s had become a substantial city of 30,000 inhabitants and the center of culture and commerce of Martinique. In April of 1902, Mt Pelee gave warnings that the volcano was becoming much more active and small eruptions buried a couple of estates killing the inhabitants. The politicians and business leader of the time made a concerted statement to the people that there was nothing to be feared and that evacuation was not required. Added to that the politicians were anxious for the upcoming elections where the blacks were challenging the status quo.  On May 2^nd 1902 the volcano erupted with substantial force (said to be 40 times that of the explosion at Hiroshima) and the heat and gasses killed all but 2 survivors within 3 minutes.

Tomb of all 30,000 who perished

The cell where the one survivor was found after the volcano of 1902

Entrance to the famous Theatre

Parterre

There remain many ruins of that day as well a monuments attesting to the catastrophe. Many building use the ruins as foundations and walls for the newer construction. However, the capital never recovered and today St Pierre is home to less than 6000 people, the capital is now Fort de France.

The marble entrances were for the elite only!

We took a short hike up the statue that overlooks the town. 

Statue - Le Vierge de Marie des Marine

View from the Statue over the town

 As we left St Pierre we had a beautiful view for the first time of the top of Mt Pelee ..... WOW

No white hat on the mountain

Mt Pelee clear!

Dominica – Roseau

 The sail from Portsmouth to Roseau, the capital of Dominica was a quiet one. being in the lee of the island.  Three hours later we contacted Marcus, apparently the main boat boy in town for a mooring ball. Anchoring here is almost out of the question as the water depths are 80+ feet deep right up close to shore.

We did take a long walk through town and visited the Botanical Gardens – a rather small but pretty retreat dating from 1890, on the outskirts of town. 

The two main attractions were the two Jaco parrots that are the National bird of Dominica and are at the center of their flag. 

Also a rather interesting item of a school bus that was flattened during hurricane David in 1979 by a baobab tree – the bus was empty at the time! 

One very flat school bus!

We had considered taking tour of the southern end of Dominica however the rain was still forecasted for every day for the near future so we decided to save a bunch of touristy item for our return to Dominica another season.

Off to Martinique…..