Author: malene

To get to St Maarten, where the boat has to be taken out of the water for us to change the rudder bearings, we travel for several days. We leave from the northern end of Martinique where the township of St Pierre is still a pale shadow of what it used to be prior to the 1902 volcanic eruption of Mount Pelee, an event labelled by experts as ‘the worst volcanic disaster of the 20^th Century’. The town is full of ruins and a small museum shows pictures from before the eruption, when it was the sophisticated, bustling capital of the island, also known as ‘little Paris’. The eruption devastated the town, killing an estimated 30,000 people, including almost all the French settlers on the island, as well as the entire island government. Only one man from within the town survived the disaster, the prisoner Louis-Auguste Cyparus, who was protected by the thick walls of his dungeon. Two other people located on the outskirts of town survived, the remainder were burned alive and buried in the ruins. Several ships were anchored in the bay, all of which are now shipwrecks, making popular dive sites for the few visitors to the town.

From St Pierre, we sail past Dominica and onto Guadeloupe, where we stay at Les Saintes for a night, spotting a beautiful five masted pirate ship on our approach. After a pleasant morning there, we take off again and head for mainland Guadeloupe, where we anchor at Pointe-a-Pitre. A friendly dolphin meets us at the harbour entrance and escorts us to our anchorage, turning side on to get a good look at the excited children who lie face down on the trampoline, mesh imprints on their cheeks. Our plan is to take a shortcut and go through the Rivière Salée which separates the two bulbous parts of the island, Grande Terre and Basse Terre. Only once we get there we realise that the river is closed for bridge traffic, the bridges permanently down. That will teach us to check ahead of time – although only really a detour of about 50 miles, it will cost us the better part of a day to make it up. It is hard to explain to the children how slow we really are travelling – less distance than from Raglan to Hamilton return will take eight hours on a windless day. Still, it is nice to revisit Pointe-a-Pitre, which is the place where we first met, 23 years ago.

So it’s up early the next morning, and back south again to round Basse Terre. On the way we meet a boatful of naked Germans in distress – they have caught their rudder on a lobster pot, and we hover at a discreet distance, conversing with them via radio, until we are satisfied that they have it sorted and don’t need our help.

North of Guadeloupe we pass on the leeward side of Montserrat, another island with a history of volcanic disaster. When the Sourfriere Hills volcano became active in 1995, a large proportion of the island’s population fled. The volcano is still active, and a volcanic exclusion zone is shown on the charts; we give it a wide berth.

Night falls somewhere north of Montserrat, and we start night watches. David does the early shift from 8 to midnight while I sleep, and then I do midnight to 4:30, after which he gets up and does the sunrise shift. In terms of our bodyclocks we are either a great or a terrible match, depending on how you look at it. Great for night watches on boats, where we complement each other well: I can go to bed any time after 8 pm and am fresh straight away in the early morning, whereas David is at his best late at night, and is terribly grumpy first thing in the morning. Not fantastic for our busy daily life at home, where he is at his worst when we briefly meet before work in the morning, and I am tired and fading fast  after work at night. On a boat it is perfect, though, because we get to do our respective watches at night, and interact when we’re both peaking round the middle of the day.

On this particular night we are showered in shooting stars, saturating us with wishes. The ocean sighs and heaves, groans and creaks, splashes and bangs. I look for whales in case they’re the cause of all the sighing, but can’t see any. The water is deep, and it is strange to think of the creatures underneath, sleeping, gliding through the depths, as we sail on the surface. There is not much to do on night watch: I scan the dark horizon for objects, vessels, check the radar to see if it has picked up anything, check the sails, the wind, the depth. After that I have a cup of tea and a snack, and then start the checking all over again. I’m reading ‘War of the Worlds’ by H. G. Wells, in which strange lights from the universe turned into malevolent Martians which wreak havoc on Earth. Hopefully the shooting stars I’m seeing are just a meteor shower.

Once I get my night vision in, lights are everywhere. As we make our way north, faint glows on the horizon turn into brightly lit islands. Glittery cruise ships speed past, lit up like Christmas trees. Lighthouses blink steadily. All this activity is matched in the sky above, where we are headed straight into the big dipper, a giant question mark in the sky suspended  over where we’ll end up tomorrow. Even the toilet bowl is alight with bioluminescence; I never knew it could be this fun to flush.

The children are adapting well to the passage, making up games as they go along. Matias writes endless letters to Santa, which David dutifully responds to at night, weaving a tangled web of present-bearing minions, some of which are boobies (seabirds) and some of which are invisible. We log plastics, they tie knots on ropes, making a maze to block the passageway from the cockpit to the saloon. We play a few games, cards, dominoes. They play with Lego, do some homeschooling, have a knot tying lesson with David. Slightly worryingly, one of Lukie’s Lego creation is a boy imprisoned on a boat, the minifigure chained to the top of what he explains is a slave ship. We decide not to read too much into it…

Before we left Martinique, we met two women who have just crossed the Atlantic, on a 72 foot research sailing vessel entirely crewed by women. We get talking, and because we’re all marine scientists, the talk soon turns to work. Jenna Jambeck works for the University of Georgia, on a project tracking microplastics in the ocean. The cruise vessel was fitted with a small trawl, designed to collect whatever surface material they met along the way. They collected large volumes of plastics, and Jemma and her team are going to go back home and analyse the size fractions to predict what marine life the plastics are likely to affect, and in what ways.

We’ve seen lots of plastics floating on this trip already – although nothing compared to what I remember from Fiji, where entire windward sides of islands are covered in debris from cruise ships. Plastic bags, bottles, containers. Styrofoam, fishing line, bottle lids. On my brief holiday there a year ago, I stop picking it up after a day or two, there is just too much, overwhelming me into inaction. Similar to how many feel about climate change – it is too big, too pervasive for a single individual to do anything that might make a difference, the temptation being to give up, to not even do our best.

On this trip, plastic fatigue hasn’t yet set in, and we still pick up what we see. The children hoard plastics, guarding them from falling into the sea; we once showed them a documentary about seabirds starving to death because their tummies were full of plastics, and that made an impression that we can still easily refer back to when we need a reason not to litter.

Anyway, Jemma and her team developed an app to record and track marine plastics. We are using it as an educational tool for the kids on this trip, and if anyone else is interested in recording the plastic you see around coasts and marine environments, you can read more at http://www.marinedebris.engr.uga.edu/tracking.

We’ll log on as Bob the Cat, so if you wish, you can track what we see online. The kids have taken to the logging with gusto, writing down long lists, and tallying the numbers. On normal sailing here, we don’t see a lot, but off the island of Dominica, we saw lots and lots, probably refloated from the coastline by a rainstorm.

Happy tracking to anyone else who wants to report ocean or coastal plastics. And good luck to Jemma and her team – we hope you help find out what happens to the plastic, where it goes, what it does, giving us more evidence which may persuade governments to start doing something about the problem. It certainly looks like a great research programme, and it is being taken seriously at the highest levels in the US: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/140613-ocean-trash-garbage-patch-plastic-science-kerry-marine-debris/.

The childrens’ games are evolving and the starwars characters are now decidedly nautical. The Ewoks go snorkelling, hunting Giant Tarantula Squid in the Mariana Trench. One character has invented a breathing apparatus, so he doesn’t have to come up for air – he goes spear diving to conquer the evil poisonous giant pufferfish that lurks in the deep.

They ask time and time again for a speargun, and were very excited to go buy fishing gear with David. I have to patiently explain why we don’t eat turtles or kill whales.

For the last many weeks, any new Lego built has been boats. All shapes, colours and sizes. An Ewok boat, full of aquatic Ewoks. Alongside it is the coastguard boat, also full of Ewoks, who come to the rescue when volcanoes blast up nearby. (For the uninitiated, Ewoks are furry, fierce little animals from the Moon Endor).

Lukas has made snorkelling robots and accompanying submarines, and there is much talk about coming up for air, cleaning the masks and diving in murky waters. Equalising ears, slipping on fins and sinking deep. Hoisting sails, turning on engines, and setting anchors.

A lot of our homeschooling has been about marine things as the boys want to read books about marine life, about explorers and early human history on these islands. They ask endless questions about the bloodthirsty Caribs, slavery, and about the pirates that used to haunt the local seas. When back from snorkelling, they hunch over the fish book together, trying to identify what we saw. They spend hours looking for crabs, peering into each and every hole we meet – and we meet a lot! Hermit crabs are a real favourite, probably because you can pick them up without being too afraid to get nipped.

Another favourite pastime is jumping. Trampoline when we’re in places where we can’t swim, in waves when we’re on a beach, and walking the plank when we’re on anchor. Amazing how long they can spend just jumping, swimming, crawling out, jumping again. And again and again.

Their stuffed animals Beaver (Matias) and Koala (Lukie) have remained important. Last Saturday was apparently Beaver’s birthday, and they spent the whole day planning what kind of party Beaver was to have, asking us to sing Happy Birthday and make cakes. This evening they asked what ‘Climbing Kids’ were, having heard about these from Beaver, who insists that it’s a movie. We have no idea what they’re talking about, and Beaver is asleep so we’ll have to check with him in the morning.

Strange imaginary creatures still lurk around every corner, although they are decidedly more marine than before. Lukie has two imaginary friends whose chief habitat is navigational buoys, so whenever we pass a buoy he says stuff like ‘Oh, there’s Nijaga again, that’s his bouy’, or ‘Oh, that bird is sitting on Skiffie’s bouy’.

Whenever we meet other children they are invariably French, but that doesn’t stop them from interacting, asking questions, using me as a translator. The other evening they started playing soccer in a small thoroughfare with two lovely local boys at Marin. One goal was the sea, the other the busy road. I stood guard, and they managed to keep themselves out of trouble, and the ball out of the water, most of the time.

 

 

Forget anything negative I said about the French – check this out. So cool. And so very, very French – adventurers, daredevils, crazy spirits.

There we were, just around the corner from Marin, Martinique, on a hot windless day. We left Marin to go somewhere we could swim, but after snorkelling for an hour we came out covered in rash. It seems the seaweed floating on the surface was stinging, or else harboured some stinging organism. There are several suspects, and we do the usual dousing in vinegar, crazy scratching, dreading a sleepless night ahead.

And then this thing appears out of thin air. That’s the dinghy I want.

They circle us several times, the kids shouting ‘Bonjour, bonjour!’. And then disappear back around the corner.

I hope they had a soft landing.

We leave St Vincent and the Grenadines, doing a long sail from Union Island to Bequia, and then onwards in an overnight stint from Bequia to Martinique. On the way to Bequia we catch our first good fish, a great family size mahi mahi.

We’ve been trawling a lure on every trip, and caught a massive (easily over 1 metre) mahi mahi on a trip from Martinique to St Lucia. I was frantically trying to slow the boat, the boys were shouting, and David was reeling the beast in. And then I lost it when trying to gaffe it onboard.

I was so disappointed that I nearly cried – we’ve almost given up on meat, as the only available seems to be incredibly tough braising type steak or chicken that doesn’t look safe to eat. When we saw the fish on the line, we were all imagining dinner, transformed from a sweet potato curry into beautiful fresh fish steaks, drizzled in lemon juice, with cracked black pepper. But, off the hook he jumped, and probably for the best, since he was way too big for us to eat, it would have been a waste. Or so we told ourselves.

Next up we caught a barracuda, which we decided to let go because of ciguatera, a terrible toxin found in reef fish and their predators. Plus, I’ve never really thought of barracuda as an eating fish (but apparently you can)…

But this latest one got on board safely  – not being able to handle two failures in a row, I let David gaffe it, so it would be his fault if we lost it. The boys were besides themselves with excitement, and that night we feasted at sunset, whilst sailing back to Martinique.

It was full moon, and as the moon was rising and the sun was sinking, dolphins were playing in the wake at the back of the boat, jumping fully out of the water, spinning wildly, and then plopping back in with a massive splash. Magic.

The night was still, the water oily, and we were forced to motor most of the way. Dolphins joined us again at sunrise, and then let us carry on towards Martinique, and the boat work we have to do there.

Next stop is the Tobago Cays, five small island dots in a sea of turquoise, surrounded by shallow coral reefs. The area is a national park and is famed for its outstanding beauty and fantastic marine life (including turtles). We have a lovely sail down to the keys, top speed about 10 knots but happily sitting at about 8 knots for lots of the way. Flying fish jump across the bow, and boobies follow, duck diving to scoop up any fish they can catch near the surface.

Once through the tricky pass to the entrance of the anchorage we are taken aback by the beauty of the place – turquoise water, white beaches, coconut palms, small vegetated islands, fringed by coral reefs. There are about 20 other boats in a small area of brilliant white sand and blue sea. We anchor, and are soon approached by boat boys. On offer are cigarettes, crayfish and croissants. Kind of strange to be offered croissants on an anchorage in the middle of nowhere, but we’re getting used to it. Where there is a need, there will be a service, and obviously there are enough boat traffic to make it worthwhile. It never ceases to amaze me how we human beings are so opportunistic, so good at making a living out of whatever is on offer.

We snorkel lots, and on the sandy bottom beneath the boat we see sea urchins and small trunkfish, the latter coming up to take a nibble of our fins with their exquisite little kissy mouths. Lukie and I see a beautiful hawksbill turtle, gliding slowly through the water. Lukas is a sea of bubbles enthusiastically pursuing the turtle – he snorkels using both arms and legs and is faster than he is graceful. The turtle throws us a backwards glance, gently kicks its legs and is off.

Lukas is getting really good at snorkelling, often the first thing they do in the morning is jump in the water, and on this trip he’s easily spent two or more hours in the water per day. He is practicing duck diving, not easy when you are still a pudgy pre-schooler, and he bobs quickly up to the surface like a cork. When he surfaces, he says to me in wonder ‘Mummy, when I dive down, my snorkel fills with water?’, obviously still not quite grasping the technical bits of snorkelling. But he’s unfazed by not being able to breathe periodically, he just grabs hold of me (I’m always near) and tries to climb on top of me, kicking his little legs and gasping for air. When he gets tired, he asks for a lift, clinging to my back like the shell of a turtle as I kick us forward. Being Lukie, the fact that he is submerged doesn’t stop him from talking, and he emits constant enthusiastic commentary on whatever we see plus whatever else goes through his mind. I’ve always enjoyed the peace of diving and snorkelling; alas that peace is gone now.

We explore the small uninhabited islands near the reef, climbing the hill behind the sand dune, arid soil covered in cacti, windswept trees and succulents. The islands’ main inhabitants seem to be huge iguanas, easily a metre long. They are everywhere, soaking in the early morning sun in the sand dunes, on the dusty path, in the undergrowth, perched at the end of a branch. We watch them slowly climb the trees, measuredly jumping from one branch to the next, the foliage dipping under their weights. Other inhabitants are beautifully rounded yellow-footed tortoises, the largest over a foot long, which wade slowly through the bush stopping periodically to gaze around them and eat what looks like rotten leaves. There are also large hermit crabs everywhere, scuttling away in their borrowed shells as we approach.

One evening we go ashore to where the locals cook lobster for guests from the visiting yachts. The boys are fascinated to watch the young men grab the lobsters by their antennae, hold them firmly and then swiftly chop them in half. The lobsters continue to twitch a long time after being halved, the legs frantically moving as if they were still hoping to flee.

Seated at a wooden table, with plastic plates, we are served the most amazing lobster dinner. Four half lobsters, fried plantain, barbecued potatoes, carrots and some other unidentifiable root vegetable, and lots of rice. Matias is squeamish about eating the lobster but Lukie digs in, quickly finishing half a lobster and eagerly asking for the other half. We end up breaking open every leg to pry out more juicy meat with Lukie hungrily watching, asking for more. After dinner, the boys are off spotting crabs with headtorches with their new friend Peter, a Polish boy we met.

George, A.K.A. Mr Fabulous is the guy who originally thought of the concept of cooking crayfish for tourists. He explains how it took him four years to develop from idea into a business. Initially, yachties were sceptical and unwilling to come ashore for a meal and he used to have to offer to cook the meal for free, giving the recipients the option to pay if they felt it was worth it. They obviously did, word spread, and now they are busy. But he is still struggling, mainly with the lack of local organisation and the way the rangers of the national park don’t have the interests of the environment or the local people at heart.

He would like to see the area better patrolled by rangers, fining people who rubbish and reprimanding people who don’t follow park rules. He wants to start a lobster seeding facility, replenishing the local reefs with lobsters. Most of all, he wants the environment properly protected, with locals able to make a living from the tourist that flock to visit the Cays.

It is tricky. Each ‘operator’, the guy in the boat who approaches the yachts, employs at least five people to catch and cook the lobsters. There are a total of 30 operators and so about 150 locals living off the lobster beach dining experience. Some of the guys are great, knowledgeable about the area and its history and keen to protect the amazing resource just beyond their doorstep. Others are in the business for a quick buck, and are happy to look the other way if boats anchor on the seagrass, or if local fishermen stray into the park to fish. Although a different area, it seems to me that the issues are not so very different from those back home in New Zealand, the eternal conflict between people needing to make a living and the preservation of the environment upon which that living is based. I agree with Mr Fabulous that ultimately the most important thing here in the Cays is to protect the outstanding environment, because all the local businesses revolve around the tourists that the area attracts. But I wonder with him about the effect of all the people – the coral reef is already showing signs of wear and tear, it is overgrown with algae in places, possibly a result of the high density of boats that occupy the area in the season, all releasing nutrients.

We feel privileged to visit, to swim with the turtles and rays, to show the children this wonderful environment of iguanas and tortoises. But we know that ultimately too many well meaning visitors like ourselves can easily wreck the place if it is not soon better policed.

As a final farewell to the area, we sail to the ‘End of the World Reef’ beyond the keys – an amazing coral plateau at the edge of the Atlantic. We snorkel and catch Conch, and after checking that the local conch fishery is sustainable, David and the kids extract the slimy slugs from the beautiful shells.

We laugh as we’re sitting at the end of the world, yet connected enough to download ‘the Cruising Chef’s Cookbook’ on the kindle, to find a recipe for conch. David ends up beating them fiercely with a hammer to tenderise them, and then sautéing them with garlic and fresh basil for lunch. Drenched with mayonnaise on homebaked bread fresh from that morning, with a squirt of lemon juice and cracked black pepper, they are sweet, juicy and utterly lovely. Lukie digs in, but Matias eyes them suspiciously and sticks to a grated carrot sandwich.

In our trip to the Grenadines, we decide to bypass St Vincent (which has a reputation for being somewhat unsafe) and aim for the island of Bequia for our first stop. The largest of the St Vincent dependencies, Bequia is a small island just south of St Vincent home to about 6000 people; the descendants of African slaves, Scottish and French settlers, and New England whalers. Whale hunting from small local skiffs still takes place off the island whenever the opportunity arises.

We arrive in Port Elizabeth which is moderately busy, with boats anchored close to one another on both the southern and northern edges of the bay. The island is known for its friendly locals, beautiful scenery, quaint towns and great marine life.

Port Elizabeth certainly has amazing services for yachts. Name whatever you desire, and there’ll be a boat providing it to you. We spot the all in one laundry, ice, water and diesel service boat, and call them on channel 67 and request a laundry pick up. Next day they deliver clean, neatly folded fragrantly smelling clothes. There is also a baguette and croissant boat, which takes bakery orders and delivers the goods fresh for breakfast. A rasta dude offers to clean the boat until it ‘shines like a newborn baby’. He has lived in Sweden for many years and has a special cleaning product which he bought from a guy from Frankfurt. He paddles out on a standup to offer his services to yachts, and as the wind picks up we give him a tow back from a hard day’s work. The locals are friendly and act with quiet dignity, and we get a sense that the place is not as poor as St Lucia. Here good services are offered at a premium price and the many tourists are happy to pay. The result is a thriving place full of happy tourists. We meet many people from hotels, who all came here on the recommendation of someone.

There is great snorkelling just by the boat – seagrass bed, with pipefish, strange eels, and an octopus changing colour as it tries to outswim us – white over the sand, green stripes over the seagrass bed, a thick cloud of ink coupled with a darker shade in a last ditch attempt to deter us. A long nosed pipefish does the same, and we follow it for a great distance, watching it change its hue to blend in with the bottom. A graceful stingray glides by, and we spot a lumpy searobin, curiously ugly, walking along the bottom on its little legs. When we dive down it cowers and fans out a beautiful set of wing like fins, edged with iridescent blue, to try to frighten us off.

On the reef next to the little beach that we’re anchored next to, we see a delicate beige eel with daint white spots, sliding over the rocky reef, looking for coverage as our shadows darken its path.

The town is pretty and full of character. Set on a steep hill, the main road lines the waterfront, with colourful houses dotted on the hillside behind. A narrow strip backed by colourful flowering trees and cosy looking restaurants lines the southern end of the harbour where we’re anchored. Conch shells are everywhere, and one day for lunch we try a conch roti. A bit chewy, but Lukie loves it… A restaurant on the waterfront has furniture made from whalebone, so you can sit and sip your cold beer, your backside planted on the vertebrae of a whale.

 

On the northern hill overlooking the bay and the sea beyond sits a small fortress, complete with black canons pointing out the sea. Apparently of the five canons two were French and three English  – the two nations fought each other fiercely and would take turns shooting down each other’s warships, but stuck to their separate canons.

The next day we visit a turtle sanctuary, a facility on the other side of the island where they collect baby Hawksbill turtle and rear them to 5 years of age in captivity. The Hawksbill turtle is threatened with extinction and a local Bequian named Orton ‘Brother’ King decided to help the population by increasing the chances of survival of a few of the thousands of juveniles that they get on the island each year. In the wild, the survival of Hawksbill turtle is less than 0.1%, but at the sanctuary they get rates of about 30%.

Each year, they protect the eggs laid by local turtles until they hatch, and then they capture about 250 juveniles as they crawl out to the sea. They rear them to about 5 years of age where their survival rates in the wild are good and then set them free. The facility is located on the Atlantic side of the island, so there is a plentiful supply of fresh clean water which they pump in daily to change the water in the tanks. The juveniles are tiny, and surprisingly clumsy, promptly bobbing up every time they try to dive down. Apparently, in the wild they don’t really dive until they are at least a year old, where they become less positively buoyant. It is a valiant effort, but apparently Orton is retiring next year, and the future of the sanctuary is uncertain. Bycatch in local fisheries is the major cause of death of the Hawksbill turtle in the wild, and global organisations such as the WWF have initiatives underway to encourage fishermen to change hooks to some less dangerous to the turtles. They are beautiful animals, the descendants of a group of reptiles that have swum in the Earth’s seas for 100 million years. We hope the initiatives to save the turtles are effective; it is a shame if they were to go extinct on our watch.

Teenage hawksbill turtle

 

 

Our impressions of St Lucia are brief as we only spent two and a half days there, hopping down the leeward coastline on our way to the Grenadines. It is a spectacular island – steep volcanic terrain, even more pronounced than on Martinique, covered in the same dense lush jungle. Hillsides plunging directly into the sea, with few bays, depth increasingly rapidly offshore.

We arrive late afternoon in Rodney Bay at the north end of the island where we clear customs and stay for a night. The boys shout in excitement when they see what looks like a real pirate ship cruising by, music blasting from it. Lukie is envious of the pirates because they are having such a fun party, and we promise him that we will dance and party on his birthday.

The following day we sail south to Marigot Bay, a sheltered bay famous for its beauty. As we enter the bay we meet our first boat boy –young men zooming around in dinghies, hanging around on the lookout for incoming yachties, offering mooring bouys, sightseeing trips, t-shirts, tourist trinkets, fruits and vegetables, and anything else that you may desire. Their boats range from kayaks and tiny rowing boats to fancy dinghies, the latter apparently often stolen from past visitors. Some are chilled dudes paddling around peddling a bunch of bananas, hoping to make a buck, whereas others zip about with massive outboards, carrying iphones in waterproof pouches around their necks, in constant communication orchestrating the movement of boats and services across the bay. Outboards are clad in colourful t-shirts to shield them from the sun, which gives each boat its own cheerful personality.

St Lucia is significantly poorer than Martinique, and has a bloodier past. The local Caribs were particularly fearsome, and fought off colonisation from Europeans for a good 200 years after their first ‘discovery’ by Columbus. Like Martinique, the island was fought over by the English and French, and St Lucia managed to change hands no less than 14 times before it finally became English in 1814. As a result, the local Patois language is very French in origin. Slaves were imported for sugarcane plantations, and the population is now predominantly of African origin. St Lucia became independent in 1979, and the economy is now based mainly around agriculture (bananas, coconuts, cocoa, citrus), as well as a developing tourism industry.

Because of the poverty, crime is more common here than in Martinique. We try to stick with one boat boy at a time, establishing a relationship and paying fairly for their services in the hope that that will protect us from break-ins. After all, they live of yachties, and have a strong interest in the island having a safe reputation. Peter, the boat boy we meet in Soufriere, tells us about his life, pointing out his house on the shoreline. He is young, not more than 25, and already has a flash dinghy with a large outboard, and an iphone around his neck. He tells us that he sits in his boat on the lookout for yachts most of the time each day, and we imagine his life, getting by on whatever he can make out of the passing boats.

After our anchor dragging sagas (perhaps more imaginary than real, but I’d never admit that) we want a mooring, and negotiate the price with the ‘Boss Man of the Balls’. Having paid a steep EC$80, we get our ball, and a good night’s sleep.

The next day it rains relentlessly, although we manage to glimpse a few rainbows when the sun pokes out briefly. After buying a bit of fruit and veg from a passing boat boy, we head south to Soufriere, with the plan of tanking up with water before heading for the Grenadines where water is scarce. At Soufriere the local boat boys seem hopeful that we can get water on the town dock, but an official bearing a radio clearly doesn’t rate our chances. A serene rastafari sits in lotus position on the dock, but we don’t feel similarly patient and give up in favour of going to visit the famous local bat cave, paying Peter the boat boy handsomely for showing us. The cave rises from the sea, a narrow fissure in the rock, its almost vertical walls covered in bats. You can smell them some distance away from the entrance, and fish flock underneath, eating the droppings. Strong tidal rips rush past the cave around the point, and we don’t fancy our chances snorkelling here.

So we move around the corner to the bay just north of Soufriere and spend the afternoon playing in the water of a marine reserve. The boys each buy a bamboo catamaran off a passing boat boy. All seems peaceful until shortly after dusk, when we are inundated with millions of tiny flying ants. They are attracted by the light so we shut all hatches and huddle in the dark, and decide to go to bed early. The following day we set out for the island of Bequia in the Grenadines early – we are off the mooring at 5 am, ready for our 10 hour long trip. En route we spend hours cleaning the tiny ants, now mostly dead, off the deck. There is little wind, so not much else to do, and once we’re finished, David makes bagels for lunch.

 

We’ve had some exciting times on anchorages. The boat came with a Danforth Anchor and one squally evening it began dragging off the anchorage at Marin in Martinique. It was dark, thunder roaring and flashes of lightning illuminating the sky, rain pelting us almost horizontally when we noticed that we were getting suspiciously close to the boat behind us. Soon we were soaked as we deployed the anchor again and again, trying to get it to bite and hold the boat in the 30 knots of breeze. Eventually it took, and we spent a sleepless night checking our position every time we heard a gust of wind.

The next day we promptly went out and bought a CQR anchor, which was heavier than the old one and also of a design that is better for gripping on muddy and sandy bottoms.

The morning we left Martinique I was sitting inside with the kids whilst David was working in the cockpit. A wind rose and as I was closing the saloon hatches to ward off the rain, David shouted for me to come on deck where I was met with  the sight of a small keelboat drifting rapidly towards us. There was nobody on board, and she was dragging side on exposing the largest possible surface area for collision with the numerous boats anchored downwind of her. It was soon clear that she was going to miss us but she was on collision course for the boat behind us. An elderly guy roared up in a dinghy, and David jumped in our dinghy to try and help him stop the boat and warn those downwind. At this stage others had seen and soon a whole group of worried men in dinghies were zooming in, shouting frantic instructions in French, grabbing on to the railing of the boat and boarding it. None of them appeared to be the owner, and two guys started frantically pulling out the anchor by hand. A few metres from the downwind boat, they tried to put the anchor back in, whilst others were fending off the boat they were about to smash into, which also didn’t have anyone on board. Finally someone must have found the keys, because the engine started and they moved upwind.

 

A good ending to what could have been tragic, a near miss that could have been two smashed up boats. It could easily have been our boat that was dragging whilst we were out on one of our numerous trips, or we could have been the boat downwind that a dragging boat slams into. When you’re on board you at least have the power to move the boat, but what if it drags while we’re on shore, or when we’re asleep? David laughs, but this is the first time I’ve been responsible for a mobile home. I guess I just have to get used to it, but it is quite different from a house, anyway.

 

It makes me paranoid, and every time we set anchor I spend a long while after checking that we are not dragging. And then checking again when a strong gust of wind passes over us. It’s becoming a standing joke – we arrive in a new place, set the anchor, David goes in the dinghy to check us in with customs, and the kids and I start panicking about dragging. Bob, the drag queen. Invariably when he gets back to the boat, I have the engine running and the children are jumping around excitedly shouting ‘we’re dragging, Daddy, we’re dragging’. We normally aren’t, but as you swing around a mooring the angles can make you seem much further from other boats one minute than the next. Regardless, I’m always relieved when David comes back, because it’s not easy for me to get the anchor up on my own (you need one person at the back to drive the boat, and one on deck getting the anchor and chain up), and I can’t trust the kids to hold the boat or pack the anchor chain. So when there is no other crew on board, my only option might be to keep my position and wait patiently until David comes back.

That same night, we anchored in another spot, and set the anchor alarm to go off if we moved more than 60 m from our spot. It is hard to know what distance to set the alarm to, as the boat will naturally swing around on an anchorage as the wind and current changes. The following morning, as we were leaving, we could see that we had indeed dragged about 30 or so m – not enough to hit the boat behind us, but enough to leave me unsettled. Whenever we anchor now, the kids and I always dive on the anchor and mark the spot, and then check again half an hour later – that passes the time until David is back from customs, and at least we have something verifiable to report, rather than just guesstimates or rough bearings. Just so he’ll take us seriously, that’s all.

We’re leaving Martinique, to spend a couple of weeks in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. So it is au revoir to the town of Marin, at the southern end of the island, where we’ve been based for the last two weeks. Being a large yachting centre, Marin is a good place to get work done and buy spare parts, but we’re looking forward to seeing some other places.

Martinique is lovely, though. Like many of the islands, it is perched on an underwater mountainous ridge which forms an arc around 900 km long. The highest point of the island is Mount Pelee in the north, a volcano that last erupted in 1902 where it killed 30,000 people, razed the then capital city St. Pierre to the ground, and caused general economic mayhem. The steep hill sides are covered in lush green tropical vegetation and most of the coastline is rocky, with little sandy bays dotted here and there. Like all islands here it has a windward (Atlantic) side, and a leeward (Caribbean Sea) side; we’ve only explored the leeward side so far.

The island is thought to have settled by humans for a long time, with waves of people reaching the Antilles from South America. Remains (including pottery) have been found from a people called the Arawaks who fished as well as cultivated the land. Their peaceful existence was interrupted around the 12^th century, when the bloodthirsty Caribs arrived from South America, killing and eating most of the Arawaks (the origin of the word ‘cannibal’ is thought to be the Indian name for Caribs: Kalinas).

Christopher Columbus came to Martinique in 1502, and named it Madinina, ‘Island of Flowers’, a name thought to be of Carib origin. However, because of the hostile Caribs and their pet (fer-de-lance) snakes the island got a bad reputation and was not settled by Europeans until 1635 when a couple of Frenchmen founded Fort St Pierre. Subsequently, the island was conquered by the English and retaken by the French a couple of times, but all the fighting stopped in 1814, and the island is now a French Overseas Department.

When sugar cane plantations took off at the end of the 17^th century, African slaves were brought to the island, and of the current population of just over 400,000, 90% is mixed race of African origin. There are only about 4000 descendants of old Carib roots left. The two languages are French and French Creole.

Being in a French place has numerous advantages, most of them to do with food. Wonderful baguettes, pain au chocolats, croissants on sale everywhere. Great coffee, and great quality wine, much cheaper than in New Zealand. Alcohol is exceptionally cheap here, the cheapest by far being the 3 litre rhum foilpacks for only 15 euro. French cheeses: unpasteurised camemberts, nutty emmentales, sweet fromage frais. Jambon crue and about 50 varieties of salami in every shop; even foie gras is for sale in the supermarket.

Despite all the cheap unhealthy food, people look fantastic. On one of our numerous shopping missions, we went to a mall in the capital Fort de France. Never have I seen so many stylish women. Slim and tall, all shades from bronze to black, teetering about on incredibly high stilettoes looking like they’ve just stepped out of Vogue. A stark contrast to shopping malls in New Zealand which tend to be the gathering places for overweight poorly dressed people.

And then the annoying bits. The French can be incredibly rude; the concept of service seems completely alien to most of the marina shop keepers. When you walk into a store you are greeted with an irritated sigh as the owner puts out his cigarette out front and reluctantly follows you in. It feels like we are ruining their day by choosing to buy something in their shop, like they’re doing us a great favour by receiving our money. The born and bred locals are friendly and will stop and help you find your way in the street, it is only the French who have recently made their life here who seem afflicted – but being in a marina town, those are the people we meet. Not that I can speak, being Danish – I still cringe for my lovely Mexican friend Nuria: we met at the University of Stirling from where she got a scholarship to go to Roskilde University for three months. She came back humiliated and astonished by the unfriendliness of Danes . I guess I have just forgotten the European way because Kiwis are so friendly.

Above all, the French here hate Americans, and often if we get treated badly it’s because they hear us speak English and assume we’re from the US. Which seems a bit unfair as Americans generally love the French and treat foreigners that visit the US with respect, enthusiasm and interest. The charter companies tell us that the cool French reception is the reason there are so few American tourists here – faced with unfriendly Frenchies, they simply go elsewhere for their holiday. A great shame for the locals, who could earn good money from more tourism.

The upside is that we get plenty of practice for our French, which is great. In fact, the whole family is turning trilingual; guys coming to the boat swear freely and the children now happily chant ‘Merde! Putain!’ whenever something goes wrong. In my quest for better service, I have made a point out of speaking Danish to the kids when we’re out and about, to show the world we’re European. Although that did backfire when the local chandlery got us a Dutch flag rather than the New Zealand one we ordered. I think the guy in the shop assumed that as Zeeland was somewhere in Holland we meant a Dutch flag. ‘New Zealand, Holland, what’s the difference?’ he shrugged when we politely pointed out it was the wrong flag.

It is also strange to stock up in another language. I’m trying to decipher what is actually in the cleaning products, the food, and even the fire extinguisher puzzles me (it says that it contains Eau Pulverisee: pulverised water ?!?). Sunblock is only available in the pharmacy, and there just in tiny high-end bottles, when what I really want is an industrial size container with a pump dispenser, like you get in New Zealand.

But it is so beautiful. Little towns with big churches and beautiful narrow streets. Amazing graveyards packed full of shiny white shrines decorated with bright flowers, and even a crucified Jesus. Colourful buildings dotted on the hillsides. Incredible vegetation – palm trees, cactus trees, frangipani and other tropical flowers in abundance dotting the landscape with sharp pinks and purples. Weary cows resting alongside the road, just along from the sugar cane fields. Coconut trees lining the back of the white beaches. Crabs everywhere, holes of all sizes lining the beach and beyond, their inhabitants scurrying away when our shadows fall on them. Lush mangroves reclaiming the sea. Underwater landscape like you wouldn’t believe – corals, seagrass, fish, colourful life everywhere.

It’s been 23 years or so ago since I was last here, but it is still just as beautiful. We’ll depart tomorrow, but will come back before we leave the Caribbean, and have a look along that windward coast.