Duprey, Le Marin, Martinique 14:27.5N  060:52.8W

We waited in Rodney Bay for the best weather window we could find as it had been a squally period and the conditions between islands was less than ideal for ‘happy’ sailing. Saturday 14^th December was the day to go, the mate’s local forecast agreed with my sailing forecasts and so off we went (leaving about 11.00 after being ‘Caribbeaned’* in the marina office first).

Stargazer leaving Rodney Bay Marina

We decided on two reefs as the forecast was still a little blowy and had a pretty reasonable sail about a quarter of the way across to Martinique. “Look at that”, I said to the mate, “What?” came the reply; “All those squalls heading our way” I said. “Oh dear” replied the mate. Quite.

The rest of the sail was squall after squall after squall, 27 knots of wind with beam on 2.5/3.0m swells – lovely. I felt unusually ‘weird’ (the mate said that I was always like that, ha ha) but I realised that as I’d had swimmer’s ear for a couple of weeks my ear balance wasn’t quite as it should be. Eventually we arrived in St Anne after 3.5 hours or so and dropped the hook. We both like St Anne’s anchorage and the holding is great. It can be busy, but no one is very close to you, so no problems... Except… during the night the swell from all the earlier squalls crept into the anchorage and boy oh boy what a rough night we had (soooooo rolly! – Mate). We decided to move in the morning, so on Sunday 15^th December off we went into Cul de sac du Marin. We’ve never anchored in Le Marin itself as the buoys are cheap and the marina is pretty cost effective too, but, being on a cost conscious exercise after all the solar panel work and with our insurance due to renew etc. etc., we decided to find a suitable anchor spot. There are a lot of channels in Marin and as we discovered they are quite steep sided and therefore shallow very quickly to sandbanks. Call me a purist, but it’s not a great idea anchoring in, say, 4m and falling back into about 15m. For a start you can’t get enough chain out and if the anchor doesn’t hold well it’ll pluck itself out in short order and then you’ll have problems you’d rather not have! Looking at this the other way, anchoring in, say, 10m and falling back into 3m isn’t great either, as if you drag for whatever reason, you can only imagine the horror of what may happen then in shallow water!

Needless to say lots of boats anchored in what I would term totally unsuitable locations. There is a joke: tell a charterer that they are trying to anchor in 50m and they’ll reply ‘it’s OK, I only draw 2m’. Well, I find it funny anyway… There are good anchorages within Marin, but they are taken up by long term boats or liveaboards, so the mate and I persevered. We crept around every anchorage that we could see, keeping a close eye on depths and in effect doing a mini survey of the whole area – which is not such a bad thing to do as it was last done in the 18^th century. After around two hours of so of this we chanced upon an unlikely area where a catamaran was anchored. Catamarans don’t draw much, but we do [2.3m in cruising trim]. As we circled around, I said to the mate “This spot isn’t bad. We can drop in 6m and the most we’ll end up in is 9.5/10m and usually it’ll be 7.5m.” We could have dropped in less but if the wind shifted to the SE then there was a very shallow bank towards which we may have gone – no thanks. We crawled up to our chosen spot (the mate steers and I do the ironmongery at the sharp end). As the anchor went down and our bow blew off wind, we could tell we were in good holding. I let 40m of chain out, we dug the anchor in and all was well. We’ve now been here a week and haven’t budged an inch.

Looking around, I saw that our new found anchorage was called Duprey. From the shore, it looks as though we are anchored far out into the middle of Marin, but we aren’t. There are shoals, sandbanks and reefs all around and we are pretty much protected from all [normal and expected] weather conditions. What a find! Three or four other boats come and go, but no one bothers us and we are pretty happy with our spot. I’ve put a waypoint in to mark our new found ‘home’ and I’m not telling anyone where it is, apart from it’s off Duprey. Even the lat/long at the header of this blog is general for Le Marin – Ah, I’d better make sure the mate’s turned our AIS off!

Our view astern

We realised that Duprey isn’t close to shops/beaches/restaurants etc etc, so charters don’t come here – there’s nowhere they can spend their money! Brilliant. In fact, so brilliant that the mate and I have decided that this is where we’ll spend Christmas and the New Year.

So on that note: Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.

*Caribbeaned: this is a term the mate and I use to describe any amount of utter confusion or downright bamboozlement that can seemingly only arise in the Caribbean :)