More Martinique, Rum!

Martinique was just begging to be explored!

We have never ventured into the interior of the island, always sticking to the anchorages along the west coast or Fort Du France Bay so we were looking forward to renting a car for a drive north along the east-coast of the island.  Our friends John and Linda (S/V Kool Kat) joined us for our adventure.  Driving on Martinique is wonderful!  The roads are beautifully maintained, they drive on the right and there are frequent informational and directional signs to guide you.

 Our destination was Habitation Clement, a 16 acre historical site on the grounds of the original Clement Rum Distillery.  Clement rum is currently made a few kilometers from here at a new facility.

 The drive through the palms at the entrance to Habitation Clement.



 Fields of sugar cane backed by a banana grove.

 The old distillery houses the Rhums Clement interpretation center.  Here you can see how rum was made throughout the centuries. 

 Barrel scale.

Barrel room.

 Workers checking the barrels.

In this small building called the Bursar's House, you can view a video commemorating the meeting of U.S. President George Bush and French President Francois Mitterrand on March 14, 1991.  They met at Habitation Clement after the first Gulf War.  There are pictures of the presidential helicopters landing in the cane field we showed you previously, all the cane cleared away to create a landing pad.

 The 18th century home of the Clement family, Creole House.

Linda and Wendy fell in love with the house and would have moved in right away.  There are large windows to let in the breeze, beautiful antique furnishings and an airy, tropical feel that was captivating.  It made you want to make a Ti Punch and retire to the veranda!

 Within the grounds are several buildings that the Clement Foundation uses to showcase art.  The exhibitions change and charitable fundraising events are held on the grounds.

Linda, Wendy and John taking a cool break in the gazebo.

 Tour over.  It's time to taste!

 Now that's a happy man!

The final selection for purchase was a bottle of Clement Rhum Vieux X.O.

It is a blend of some of the more prestigious aged rums from

1952 (the year Jim was born),

1970 (the year Jim graduated from high school) and

1976 (the year Jim and Wendy met).

How could we not take a bottle with us!



The South Coast of Martinique

It's amazing, but after all these years in the Caribbean we are still finding new places to explore.

This time it was Le Marin and St. Anne on the south coast of Martinique.

Neither of us was prepared for Le Marin.  We knew it was the boating center of Martinique with every kind of marine service available.  But that didn't prepare us for the size of the bay, HUGE, with more then a 1000 boats at anchor, on moorings or in the marinas.  It's not exactly a swimming bay but it is close to lots of shopping and restaurants.

Customs office in Le Marin.

Looking downhill toward the crowded bay.

The small town is colorful and picturesque.

Poor weather kept us on board for the first 4 days.  The wind blew 20-25 knots with frequent rain squalls.

This wasn't the only flag unraveling in the wind.  We are on our 3rd French courtesy flag in 4 years.

Less then 3 miles from Le Marin is a beautiful beach and the small town of St. Anne.

These beautiful racing boats were out practicing for the upcoming Bastille Day regattas.

Hauling in the sail.

Half-full of water after a rigorous practice, this one is sitting a little low in the water!

Street scenes from St. Anne.

Our lunch spot on the beach.  We had acras morue (fishcakes) and poulet coco (chicken in a coconut sauce).  Tres bon!

On Sunday afternoon, a large catamaran with about 16 people on board anchored next to us for the afternoon.  Girls in bikinis, bare-chested guys and photographers who seemed to be shooting a video. 

Nice eye-candy!

The only downside was that we had to listen to the same song blaring for 4 hours.  We couldn't make out the words but Jim thought they were singing "Who's got the hockey puck, who's got the hockey puck?"

Yeah right, on a French island in the Caribbean!

Photographer getting the close-up butt-shot.

Photo shoot is over and we are left alone to enjoy another beautiful sunset.

A quick position update for those readers who are wondering where we are currently.  We are on a mooring between the Pitons in St. Lucia.  Tomorrow at dawn we'll sail to Bequia in the Grenadines, approximately 57 nautical miles south.

St. Martin to Dominica

Just a quick update to let everyone know where we've been the past few weeks.

After waiting 2 weeks for wind, (a little wind, we'll take any wind please!) we finally left for St. Barth's on June 11th, just 1 day later then last year.  We spent 1 day enjoying Anse Columbier before heading off to St. Kitt's.  It was a quick stop this time, just long enough to say hello to friends Mike and Renee before grabbing a weather window to head south. 

We planned to island hop, overnighting at Montserrat and Deshaies, Guadeloupe but the winds weren't north-easterly as predicted so after a few hours we had some decisions to make.  Option 1 was to keep on a close-hauled course and do long tacks to work our way up to Montserrat.  This was going to be difficult and we couldn't be sure we could make it before dark.  The second option was to continue on a close reach and take advantage of the full-moon to do an overnight to Dominica.  We were having a good sail in that direction, doing between 5 and 6 knots in moderate seas.  This seemed like the best choice.  We probably would have traveled the same amount of miles tacking back and forth to Montserrat!  Decision made, off to Dominica.  Contrary to what some of our friends think, Merengue can stay out after dark.  She just doesn't like to!

That afternoon we had a wonderful dolphin encounter west of Montserrat.  Jim spotted a pod of dolphins chasing a school of fish about a quarter of a mile off of our port side.  A moment later a group of rowdy dolphins broke away from the chase and came to play on Merengue's bow wave for a short time before heading back to their dinner.

The night sail was beautiful, star-lit before the moon rose to light up the sea and sky.  But as the clock turned to midnight the weather changed with the new day.  A squall blew through with 25-30 knots of wind.  The seas rose and the wave interval dropped to about 4 seconds.  It became a bumpy, miserable ride!  It was difficult pushing through the waves even with 20 knots of wind.  We should have arrived in Portsmouth, Dominica mid-morning on Friday but with these conditions we didn't drop anchor until 4:30 p.m.  We were also having some engine problems so we didn't want to push it.  We were only getting 1800 RPM's and thought that we might have stirred up some gunk in the fuel tank in the rough conditions causing the fuel filter to clog.  The last 10 miles took us almost 5 hours!

Fast forward a week and Jim has changed the filter, installed a new fuel pump because the old one decided to quit and filtered all the diesel in the fuel tank.  This afternoon we moved to Roseau, Dominica for the night and as we were pulling up to a mooring ball the engine died!  We're hoping that it can be fixed by adjusting the idle which we'll try first thing tomorrow.   If that works we'll head to St. Pierre, Martinique.  We're hoping to spend a few weeks along the south coast of this beautiful island.  If I close my eyes and breath deep I think I can smell the baguettes!