March 2nd Fort de France to St Pierre We departed Fort de France around 8.30am to head up to St Pierre, an anchorage further up the island of Martinique. Paul drove the boat while Robbie sorted out all his fishing lures which were in a big tangled mess.
We arrived in the bay, it’s very picturesque as it lies at the foot of Mt Pelee’, a Volcano which killed around 30,000 people when it erupted in 1902, there was just one survivor a prisoner because his prison cell walls were so thick he survived. He was imprisoned for murder. 12 ships anchored in the bay were destroyed.
The 3 boys went for a dive and the girls took Starlets duck into the wharf which was a mission but Jennifer handled it like a pro, having to put out a stern anchor to keep the duck from going under the wharf.
We walked through town and found the tourism office where we completed our online check out of Martinique. The town is very quaint with a lot of old stone ruins with wild flowers growing out of them.
We found a nice waterfront restaurant for lunch where we shared a bottle of wine and enjoyed a seafood lunch.
The boys arrived back from their dive, they took Southern Stars duck up to the end of the island where there is a small island or large rock called the Pearl. Robbie and Mark dived and Paul was going to snorkel but it was too rough, so he sat in the duck and got quite sunburnt.
We sat outside at a small bar which was filled with locals whom were quite friendly, and watched the world go by. There were kids doing wheel stands on their pushbikes in front of us and we were cheering them on. They loved it. Then a local guy walks up with the biggest gold chain around his neck I have ever seen. We got chatting to him and he sat down with us for a bit. Maree was mesmerised by all his tattoos but I couldn’t stop looking at the gold chain. The beers were really cheap 2.50 euro each for large Heinekens except they ran out of cold ones.
We checked out the small supermarket and got a couple of things. Fancy the pink, blue or orange toilet paper? We thought that was pretty cool, is that a new thing everywhere or just in St Pierre?
Back to the boat where we watched the sun set and we skipped dinner just eating platters of nibbles including the fresh baguettes we brought with Pate. Mark and Jennifer came over and she bought one of her home made pound cakes which we had with Coconut ice cream. Delicious! The boys are still avidly chasing the huge Tarpin fish in the lights each night. But the Tarpin are too clever for them!
I have two lots of good news. Firstly Peter was able to retrieve all my photos off the portable hard drive of ours that died. He is such a clever guy! He had a few attempts while he was on the boat for the Atlantic crossing with no success. He took it home to Germany and was able to eventually retrieve all the photos! What a legend!
The next thing is that Paul and Maree brought over a new underwater camera for us, our other one the digital screen died but the camera still worked. The last few weeks all of our photos have been taken “blind” – we could not see what we were taking until we inserted the SG card into the computer. Robbie used the new one today for all the underwater shots, it’s a beauty waterproof to 100 feet.March
