They Get You Coming and Going, Ep. 222a

I have been trying to cut down on the alcohol. I truly am. Nobody is espousing the heath benefits of drinking anymore. But after a hard day of work in the tropics, there’s only so much a glass of water can do for you. And, yes, I did say ‘work’. Many of our friends assume that when we arrive at the boat, especially at a place like here in the Caribbean, it is all stunning sunsets and umbrella drinks. The intense physicality of sailing as a sport can not be underestimated. There are several weeks at the beginning of the season consumed by loading gear, rigging sails, fixing equipment that suddenly stopped working, and doing upgrades to keep the boat functioning well so that the core season doesn’t become a long stream of repair projects. And there is the act of sailing itself. The raising and trimming of sails, the navigating, the studying of books and apps to find out where to anchor and what the weather has in store for us, the schlepping of groceries from store to dock to dinghy to boat. We do periodically get to our destination in time to enjoy a sunset and maybe a swim, but it is far from a cruise ship experience. I like to think about it like a backpacking trip. You plan well in advance, you test out your gear, you drive to the trailhead, you do the work of hiking to the summit, but there’s not a lot of time to dawdle, as you need to get to a place of safety to pitch the tent for the night, make dinner, and figure out when to break camp in the morning to give yourself enough time in-route to the next campsite.

But as we stared out into the mighty Atlantic Ocean from a little beach cafe on the east coast of Martinique, a cocktail seemed like a harmless option. I went for the ‘Hurricane’ – a potent blend of rum and local fruit options. It didn’t have an umbrella, but instead an annoyingly long blade of grass that threatened to poke one in the eye when taking an innocent first sip. Hurricane seemed a fitting metaphor for the day. Like the drink, it all had started out so innocently. Karen and I, with a surplus of time in Martinique before our next guests arrived, decided to rent a car for four days to better see the for reaches of the island … and to get a break from the boat project list, if I’m being honest! This was the week before Christmas and a Sunday no less. No one was replying to my requests for a rental car, even when I started using my best French with the help of Google Translate. Finally a local outfit replied, saying they had a Mitsubishi Space Star for a premium holiday price of 55 euros a day. Beggars can’t be choosers. We showed up at her house, with the car rental operation appearing to be her side hustle. I should have seen the warning signs, as a Google search revealed that the last production year of this car was 2005. She promised that it was no issue that there were a few less-than-minor door dings and plenty of extra bumper wear. Off we went in our tiny stick shift car. We picked our first stop 30 minutes across the island on the eastern side. The main roads here are mostly modern pieces of engineering, but as soon as you get off of them, it’s cracked concrete, holes that will swallow the tiny wheels on these tiny cars, and a lane width that is not really enough for two cars to pass. On one gradual hill, I stopped to figure out a plan around a large hole. But I couldn’t get going again. I revved the engine and slowly released the clutch, just like my dad had taught me when I was 16, but the engine would stall out. It simply didn’t have enough horses under the hood to move the two of us up the hill. I finally got it going and at the top of the hill, a loud metallic rattle tipped me over the edge. This car was going back to Ms. Side Hustle. There were plenty of more hills in our future and we didn’t want to suffer a breakdown. Back at her driveway, her demeanor had definitely shifted. She insisted on driving the car and showing me that nothing was wrong with it. She roared up nearby hills in first gear, exclaiming ‘No refund!’ I pleaded with her to stop on a hill, and then start again. On cue, a huge rainstorm descended on us. She finally stopped on a hill. Sure enough the car stalled when she released the clutch. She then proceeded to rev the engine near red line and release the clutch, leaving behind a pungent burning rubber smell. She was insisting on proving me wrong, the clutch be damned. And I had to wonder, was I not the first to tell her this little old car can’t get up hills? She finally gave up on the clutch burning and let the car roll back down the hill. Except that she didn’t take note of a drop off at the edge of the pavement, which she ran over the top of, suspending the car with the rear wheels dangling in air. I never saw Karen get out of the back seat of a car so fast. With our proprietor alone in the car, she revved the engine again, scrapping the underbody of the car as the front wheel drive slowly pulled her onto all four wheels again. She blurted out, ‘Two day refund, that is all’ and insisted we get in the car to go back to her house. There was no way we were getting back in that jalopy. I finally walked away with two days of euros as a refund in my pocket, shaking my head. Like a horrific event that was just happening before your eyes, you are in shock as you ask yourself the question ‘Okay, what just happened?’

We sat in the town square, trying to process it all and figure out what our next step was going to be. We didn’t want to be defeated by Ms. Side Hustle, but yet it was Sunday and nobody had cars. But there was the option of the airport. Coincidentally, a taxi pulled up in front of us, disgorging its passengers, and we hopped in for the 45 minute ride to the airport while I worked the phone to get us a reservation with Europcar. At our arrival, the office was sublimey air conditioned, and the nearly new (but equally tiny) Renault Clio that they offered had the proper horses under the hood and plenty of air conditioning to get us gleefully zipping down the highway. All in all it was a three hour delay in our island adventure, and my hands were still shaking from the earlier episode, but clutching the Hurricane and pairing it with a nice chicken stew, made the world feel it was back on an even keel once again.

It may come as a surprise to some, but there is major traffic on the island of Martinique. Or maybe we just had poor timing with all of the last minute Christmas shoppers. But the next day, we slugged through the main city of Fort de France and on to some minor roads, and further onto minor to the minor roads that eventually led to the trailhead for Mt Pelée. Along the way, we had some major hills to climb, the kind that you accelerate well before getting to the beginning of in order to retain some amount of momentum at the top. The little-engine-that-couldn’t would have been no match for this road layout.

Mt Pelée dominates the skyline on the northern half of Martinique, and it dominates the memories of earlier generations. In 1902, after a few oddly ignored warning signs, it erupted with more energy than an atomic bomb, killing within minutes all but two residents of St Pierre just downwind of the blast zone. The death toll of 29,000 is one of the deadliest in recorded history. St Pierre was the capital of the island and commercial center at the time. Twelve ships at anchor that day, trading in the cargo of that period including sugar, coffee, rum, and cocoa, were burned and sank to the bottom of the bay. Their resting place is now a sort of Pearl Harbor zone of Martinique, marked with bright yellow buoys where anchoring is forbidden, likely as much a navigational concern as an emotional tribute to the lives lost.

When we sailed into St Pierre last Spring, we eagerly wanted to climb Mt Pelée, but rain and the lack of public transit set us back. This time, with our mighty mini of a car, we confidently parked at the head of the trail, where, in very French style, we first took a lunch at a tiny cafe, whose tiny kitchen produced a delicious lamb stew and crispy vegetables. This trailhead dining put to shame the trailheads at the foot of the Sierra Nevada or the Appalachians.

We had managed to avoid the rain, but clouds persisted on the steep accent to the first pass. Frustratingly, pains of osteoarthritis were cursing through my left knee, especially frustrating because just two months ago Karen and I had completed a four day high elevation trek on the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. Once again, the mysteries of the human body announce their ill-timed presence. For a teaser, we snuck in an ever-so-brief glimpse of the Mt Pelée summit as clouds parted.

Long time readers of this blog might recall our friend Theo, with whom we sailed the waters of Greece during the first summer of Covid. We had both made it into Greece before extra Covid restrictions were put in place, which gave us plenty of uncrowded destinations to choose from with the downside of no one to share it with, until we met each other. Fast forward to last year, Theo and his partner Pam crossed the Atlantic just after us on their boat Paloma and to our surprise they were walking by Sea Rose at the dock in Le Marin when they did a double-take. We were working with a local company to start building a solar arch for Sea Rose, and likewise, they were in Le Marin for repairs to their Amel 50. Reunions with sailing friends from distant ports can be both an emotional and a fleeting experience – so many stories to swap, all under the umbrella of doubt when or if you will see each other again. It is kind of like meeting a friend from high school while rushing to your next airline departure.

These interludes with friends make any work day more tolerable. And Le Marin, with its dizzying array of marine stores and technicians, is the place to come in the Caribbean to make progress on the ever present to-do list. We added a fourth Victron lithium battery to our house bank, giving us 1200 amp hours of reserve power. This is compared to less than 300 amp hours of usable power previously. Karen jumped into hand-sewn repairs to our sun shades, patiently completing a job that would have taken mere minutes on her Sailrite sewing machine back home. And, we hired a refrigeration technician to address our freezer, which seemed like it was running continuously in the high ambient heat of the Caribbean.

On the southern portion of Martinique, we followed a beat up concrete road that eventually turned into a beat up dirt road. It was a single lane wide. If you met an oncoming car, someone had to pull half their car into the brush and weeds while keeping up steam so that wheels would not get stuck. Our Renault Clio had the road clearance of a Radio Flyer wagon and I had to chuckle. Back home, we wouldn’t dare tackle this kind of road without a modern four wheel drive car with big knobby tires and even bigger shocks. We passed a few rusty road signs with words that included ‘interdit’, but progress had already been slow and neither of us wanted to take even more time to translate the full text of the signage. We gained confidence in the fact that no gates blocked our way – that is, until we came to a clutch of farmers using basic hand tools including a scythe to clear a field. A rope gate blocked the road at their farmstead and we figured this was the limit of our adventure. Not so. A lady took a break from her soap making operation under the torn shading of a nylon tarp. She spoke no English, but it was clear from the paper stub she handed us that for a fee of 3 euros, we could cross her private land to a beach beyond as long as we returned by 1600. It was the best three euros we’ve spent in a long time. A nearly empty beach – save for a gathering of naked men at the far end – awaited our pleasure. We selected a shady clearing under a pink trumpet tree for a much needed nap and a swim. I’m not sure the amp-hour rating of our human batteries, but they were fully recharged by the end of this day in nature’s embrace.

With a few extra days before a planned visit to Fort de France to watch the New Years fireworks, we set out on a brisk, beautiful sail north along the west coast of Martinique, scoping out possible anchorage spots for our upcoming guests, Matt and Michelle. We had sailed by this coast several times before. But, like the experience when you slow down to show a friend your home city, the careful eye can reveal new treasures. At Pointe Pothuau, just south of St Pierre, we snorkeled through waters even warmer than the typical Caribbean anchorage. Glancing to the sea floor, bright white objects caught our eye. These were dinner-plate sized starfish, likely attracted to these waters warmed by the heat of the same magma that had led to the famed 1902 eruption.

These waters are teeming with life. We regularly see whole schools of flying fish launching themselves into the air ahead of our bow like in a synchronized ballet, and larger fish jumping to be free of even larger predators. The price to pay for this lively animal kingdom is the plethora of fish trap buoys on the water’s surface. It is fishing at its most basic and primitive. Clear plastic water bottles are the preferred, inexpensive choice for buoys, and fisherman hand pull their lines. The clear bottles are nearly translucent and easy to run over with our propellor, so we keep a vigilant eye out for them. But what happened next was pure bad luck. As we dropped the anchor, Karen went to back down Sea Rose to set the anchor and make sure we were holding, a practice we had done a hundred times. But she heard an unfamilar sound so she took the engine out of gear. A peek overboard revealed a section of floating line leading to the stern and under the boat. We both donned snorkel gear and dove overboard to assess the situation. Sure enough, we had backed down over an old fish trap line and it was wrapped like a boa constrictor around the shaft of the propellor. An hour later, and many breathe-holdings with a sharp knife in hand, the mass of line finally relinquished its death grip on our propellor. But damage had been done. The line had forced the propellor shaft bearing partially out of its home in the shaft strut. This bearing serves a critical role of keeping the propellor aligned. Were it to slide further out of position, the shaft could suffer fatal damage. We cautiously motored back south, sailing whenever there was enough wind, on a two-day hop back to Le Marin, where we pushed for an emergency haul-out at the one main, huge, nothing-tiny-about-it shipyard. They do things differently here, or maybe we do things differently back home. But, when they haul you out, they haul out. That’s it. You have to go around to the various technicians and stores nearby to find someone with the skills and the schedule to fix your boat. We found this out the hard way after they placed Sea Rose on the hard with jack stands in position, and simply left us to haul another boat. But in the end, we found a very competent technician that squeezed us in and started dismantling the propellor and the shaft bearing with some fancy pneumatic tools. Still, it is a pretty routine job to do for an engine shop; we were prepared for one night on the ‘hard’ and back in the water the next day. Unfortunately, the fish trap line had done more damage than was first visible. It had loosened the big beefy skeg that hold the propellor shaft in position. He called over one of his fiberglass guys in the yard, and we could all see that it had moved the skeg out of alignment. It was going to be a week’s worth of fiberglassing to get the skeg back in order, and with the holidays, we would have to wait until mid-January to get on their schedule.

It was scramble time. We had two sets of friends coming to sail with us in January. And, oh by the way, where were we going to sleep? This was the start of peak holiday season and shipyards are a far cry from the Ritz-Carlton. What about all of our food onboard? Reports from back home of the coldest December in decades made us not wallow too long. But it did feel like a bit of dark-humor. “Ha! You thought you were going to spend the winter sailing the azure waters of the Caribbean. Not so fast, skullywag… get to work on those bilges before the captain makes you walk the plank!” To this, I can only imagine one dream-state response. “Mate, it sounds like you’ve had a rough day. How about I make you a Hurricane. But, keep the eye patch on. That tall blade of grass is a killer!”