We arrived in Martinique (#20)

What an amazing feeling to finally arrive at our destination after 32 days out on the ocean. And what a destination… the tropical island of Martinique with it’s amazing blue waters and palm beaches. A true paradise, which we couldn’t wait to discover. But first it was time to celebrate.

We arrived around 11:00 a.m. and as soon as we had dropped our anchor the kids jumped in the water. While they swam and played around the boat we rinsed all of the salt off the boat and we stowed away the lines and sails and all the other things like our life vests and sleeping bags that we wouldn’t be needing in the following days. Afterwards we prepared a lunch and we figured it was a good time to open the bottle of champagne that we had brought for this occasion.

The kids are not drinking champagne in the picture (It's schweppes)

Waking up in Martinique

We woke up very early in the morning because we heard a huge splash, we jumped out of bed to check if our dinghy was still hanging in place. We had heard that a lot of dinghies get stolen in this area so we were cautious.

As promised the kids could go swimming first thing in the morning. They went straight from their bed into the water. They loved it, they were having so much fun.

Since we hadn’t received a confirmation mail from customs yet we went to a customs office in the town of Saint Anne, as fellow sailors told us to. Turns out it wasn’t so much as an office but a bar that had a computer available to fill in the required documents, it was officially approved by customs so after filling out all the paper work and paying 3 euros we received a stamped document and we were cleared in, ready to go and explore the neighbourhood. We had lunch at the bar and went to the town’s grocery shop afterwards.

Back at the boat the kids resumed their favorite activity, swimming. Sven took them to the pontoon by the beach where all the boat kids meet in the afternoon to play before he went to the chandelier shop to buy a chain for the dinghy. He also took all of our trash from the crossing to the recycling area. Meanwhile I cleaned the galley and the saloon and did some laundry, with some swimming breaks to cool down in between.

We decided to have a drink and lunch at the restaurant we had come across earlier. The sunset during our dinghy ride there was beautiful. They didn’t have a large choice at the restaurant but it was nice to be out. Back at the boat we drank some rum, one of the flagship products of the Caribbean, before going to bed.

Beach day

We woke up early again, around 6 a.m. I think we still had to get used to the time difference. While we were having breakfast we heard on the VHF about the cruisers net. An amazing initiative by the cruisers here in Saint Anne and Le Marin. Three times a week they broadcast and share all sorts of useful information like important news updates, social gatherings, things for sales and anything that might be important to the cruisers here. There is also time to ask questions so it’s a great way to stay up to date and to meet fellow cruisers.

Just before noon we received a phone call from a Belgian newspaper, they had heard about our adventure and wanted to publish an interview with us in the paper the next day.

After lunch we had a walk through Saint Anne and enjoyed an ice cream. Later we went to the beach to meet up with some of the other cruising families that we came in contact with trough the cruisers net. We had a nice time at the beautiful beach of Club Med. The resort was closed because of the Covid pandemic so the beach was now accessible to the public. Sven managed to get a coconut out of a palm tree. We opened it when we got back to the boat, not an easy task, but worth the effort. It was full of delicious coconut water. Later we went over to François and Cathy of s/v Ystafell and invited them together with Véro and Thierry of s/v Camerado for a small party at our place in the evening. We had an amazing evening catching up on stories.

The next days

Besides discovering the neighbourhood, the little town of Saint Anne and the Marina in Le Marin, we started to pick up the normal life again. The kids continued their schoolwork and Sven and I had some work to catch up on. We woke up very early every morning, which gave us plenty of time to get all the necessary work done before noon so we could relax in the afternoon. We took trips to the beach or wandered around the little shops in town and had a great seafood dinner at a local restaurant.

All of us had developed some cravings during our time on the ocean so we were happy to finally be able to do some grocery shopping and some more extensive cooking and baking.

We received a lot of messages and emails thanks to the article in the local newspaper. It was amazing to read all these positive words.

We even got a message from the Belgian, national television with the question to have the kids make a short video for the news. Liam and Sky were super proud to be in the Belgian news.

It was an amazing first week in Martinique, just as wonderful as we had imagined. Martinique is a beautiful and vibrant tropical island. The perfect place to relax after the big trip and to meet up with old and new friends. We’ll stay here for a while and discover a lot more, so stay tuned…

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