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This is the last blog entry about my stay in Martinique.

Day Nine

Holli anchored in Schoelcher - Gertsch home village - on day five. He wanted to move on to Le Marin - a city in the south of the island - where he then stayed for the rest of the week to repair some things on his boat.

As we wanted to do a sailing trip with him, he decided not to go directly to Le Marin in one day, but to do a stopover at Anse Noire - one of two small fisher villages in the same bay. Sleeping on the boat would have been to much for some of us :-)

Sailing to Anse Noire, from Martinique - Day 9

from day 9

On this day at 8am Holli picked us up with his rowboard Frodo. Afterwards he weighted the anchor and hoisted the sails, i had to steer through the other ships anchoring in front of Schoelcher. I think I did a good job since we didn't hit the others.

Once we were on the sea, we let the autopilot do its work. At the beginning we had not a lot of wind, nevertheless we got quite fast to our destination. So we decided to sail a little further and then do a turnaround.

Chilling on the boat, from Martinique -Day 9

The weather forecast for the last weekend predicted a tropical wave hitting Martinique. The forecast was - as usual - wrong, the wave hit us before we reached Anse Noire.

Holli did not shorten the sails at the point we saw the wind rising. Afterwards he regretted that as the fore sail was ripped by the strong wind. However, finally we arrived safe in Anse Noire.

Reaching Anse Noire, from  Martinique - Day 9

from day 9

For the rest of day we were hanging around on the boat, did a little bit skin-diving and had our after lunch rhum punch.

The bay was surrounded by rocks and cliffs and there was one spot were you can jump into the sea. At first we took the smaller about 5 meters high rock, afterwards of course the higher about 15 meters high one. The next time I will try to keep my hands close to the body...

When Gertsch arrived by car, we walked to the neighbour village Anse Dufour and stayed there at a beach bar for a while.

Fisher boats in Anse Dufour, from Martinique - Day

Day Eleven

On the tenth day I needed a break. From the time on Hollis boat I got a nice sunburn.

from day 9

It was day eleven were we went to the beach for the last time. We once again drove to the north to Anse Couleuvre, but this time we did an about 20 minutes walk from there and reached a beach - Anse des Galets - where no one else was.

As we knew that we had to leave on the next day, we tried to enjoy our last hours at the beach as much as possible. We stayed at Anse des Galets nearly till the sunset, however we had to leave before it got dark since we had to walk back to the car.

Imperium Gastunum, from Martinique - Day 9

On the day of our departure we went to Fort-de-France for shopping some souvenirs once more. After having a typical creole lunch, we brought Holli back to Le Marin and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. At around 9pm we took off from Le Lamentin International Airport and returned back to good old Europe, which welcomed us with a forceful thunderstorm.

Holli may return to Austria in fall, Gertsch will stay. Next year he possibly will change to Gouadaloupe. I'm looking forward to it and my next holiday...