Off to find a better anchorage

Woke up to my calendar reminding me to attend Hannie’s graduation today. She had put the entry into my diary with the extra comment ‘DONT MISS IT THIS TIME’. This is her Master’s graduation from Imperial, we never made her graduation from Sheffield!

I should have been back in the UK at the moment, my second planned trip back that has not happened.

Thank goodness Phoebs is at home to look after poor old Coco and the house, and most importantly get the veggie garden going. Actually looks like the veggie garden is looking the best it’s ever been, so well weeded and looked after!

We went into town on Jeldi Jeldi to go to the Fruit and Veg market. It was a great find as it was very quiet but loads of good stalls, with delicious huge avos, granadillas, quavas, mangos and lady’s fingers bananas. We are feasting on fresh salads and fruit, and loving it. We also decided to buy some face masks which we luckily came across down one of the quieter streets.

We got back to the boat and decided we should move on as we did not want to swim in the water there. We headed across deeper into the bay and looked at a couple of places, so many bays have dilapidated, abandoned old boats, which is never that welcoming. We landed up anchoring right opposite Fort-de France, in a resort village. We managed to get in amongst 3 other Catamarans, including a British one, near a pretty little beach and away from the built up area.

Looking back to Fort-de-France

Our new anchorage

The resort to the right of us

We hadn’t been here that long, it was 5pm and Rowan was on a call from Australia when a dinghy came up to introduce themselves. Sue and Chris (we think!) are on the British cat, obviously spotted us British newcomers, so we invited them on board for a drink. It’s always interesting to hear everyone’s story during this strange lockdown time. They sold up everything in the UK 10 years ago (recently divorced!) and have been sailing in the Med since then, then January they did the transatlantic to Barbados. They had family to meet in the Bahamas in April so made their way up. They got into Puerto Rico before lockdown on their 10 year USA Sailing visa. Then lockdown happened and after about a week the navy arrived fully armed and said all non USA boats had to leave immediately. They said it was pretty intimidating and quite a surprise. They obviously left and then realised there was no where to go as the Bahamas was in total lockdown and like us they found Martinique was the only place accepting us Brits. Fun to crack open my new gin bottle with guests, especially as the freezer has started working again too, so I have ice again!

We went to bed feeling like a plan is coming together, the boatyard has accepted all the work to be done on the boat and has us booked in for the 18th May. We have to go there on the 13th so they can look around the boat and check what is required for the 18th. We also got an email from Grenada confirming they would accept PolePole for storage and they will email us when we can come, we will have to do another 14 day quarantine there beforehand. He also managed to sign us up with the British consulate in Grenada requesting a flight home. We’ve already had a response from HMS asking for all our details, so we may also have a way to get home too!