A Visit From Brenda and Caribbean History
Martinique is a fairly large French island, which means great grocery shopping and French-subsidized pricing on all the good stuff like wine and cheese. It is also one of the unofficial family sailing meet-up spots in the Caribbean. There are so many boats in the harbour at Sainte Anne that at night the anchor lights resemble a small city. Every night on shore is a family happy hour, and there are so many people and dinghies it can be overwhelming. Rosie soaked up all that time with her girl squad, at one point spending three nights in a row on a friend’s boat, SV Sapphire Blue (we first met them in Albania, then again in Ibiza and now here). Jordan made great friends with the German twins on SV Ocean Twins.
——-A quick aside about groceries. We have two freezers in our bow cabin with four drawers each and when we can find good meats, cheeses and frozen goods, we pack them full. Having depleted our stores from the Canary Islands we were excited to finally replenish. Most of the Caribbean grocery stores are dark, small, stinky and the likelihood of bringing home bugs in your flour is high. So we left the kids with Hannah, Gus dropped us off at the dinghy dock, Russ and I rented a car and filled two GIANT shopping carts at the Carrefour. We checked out, fit the groceries in the car, then into the dinghy with hardly any room to sit, and back onto the boat, where we sorted and put everything away. It’s a full day process. The freezers had been turned off to defrost and back on again. Two days later, we discovered that one of them wasn’t actually working and all of its precious stores - hundreds of dollars worth of hard-to-find items - were now a disgusting mess of rot. That bow cabin is not air-conditioned and reaches a hundred degrees daily. So literally, all of our effort and money spent spoiled overnight. We learned our lesson and bought a new freezer in St. Barths and now we check them almost daily. In sailing, there is an expansive, carefree feeling to having full stores, just as carelessly losing them is one of the lowest lows…. ——-
But moving on to the fun stuff, another reason for stocking up was that we had a visitor coming! My cousin, Brenda, from Arizona, flew to Martinique to stay with us on the boat for a few days. It was so great to see her and show her our sailing life. We hung out on the beach, did some sightseeing and talked late into the night.
Martinique, like all Caribbean islands, has a long history of colonialization and slave trade with excellent museums and landmarks that very thoughtfully teach the history. Our first stop sightseeing was the Mémorial de l’anse Caffard. Right off the coast of Martinique in 1830, a ship carrying hundreds of slaves wrecked, and everyone died. They are memorialized by 15 stone sculptures of people facing the sea where the shipwreck happened. The posture and features of the stone people captures the hopelessness of everyone trapped on board.
Our second stop was a beautiful botanic garden, the Jardin Balata, where we walked among the native plants. Colonialism is apparent in the architecture everywhere on the island, and in the types of plants brought from Europe. Sugar cane is still a big industry on Martinique.
And a beloved product of sugar cane is rum. Our final stop was the Habitatión Clément, a rum distillery and sculpture garden, where we saw the historic distilling equipment, learned all about the nuances of taste, smell and aging of rum, then finally got to taste.
We took Brenda for a bit of sailing up the coast to Sainte-Pierre on the northwest side of the island. A tiny town with no good grocery or restaurants, its modern day life is still focused on its tragic past. In 1902, the volcano above the town erupted unexpectedly and 28,000 people died; only 3 survived. Prior to the eruption, the little city was known as the “Paris of the Caribbean” and was the main city on Martinique. The streets now are quiet, with beautiful murals, and a pretty colonial-style town hall and church. The small museum of the volcanic eruption is well done.
Between the memorials and the tragedies, Martinique has a troubled history, and it’s not unique to this island. Flying to the Caribbean for vacation in the past, we haven’t concerned ourselves with how they became the resort centers they are today. Traveling slower by boat gives us the chance to learn and explore beyond beaches.
We loved having Brenda visit and sharing our sailing life. It was also fun to meet up with boats from the Med and to make new friends we would run into throughout the Caribbean. By the end of February, we were settling into the rhythm of Caribbean life.
