Martinique

Thursday, June 1
St. Anne, Martinique
N 14 degrees, 26.32 minutes
W 060 degrees, 53.09 minutes

This will make you laugh: after an exhausting sail
south yesterday down the coast of Martinique (mostly
into the wind, of course), today Dean and I decided
to take a day off and just relax. You like that?
Though our day-to-day life does not have the same
kind of heavy stress as chipping ice off the bedsheets,
45-minute commutes out of Boston, or arriving at work
on Monday morning to find a thousand new messages in
Larry Summers's public email account, we do tend to
fill much of our time in port with finding food, water,
fuel, a bank, an internet cafe, laundry, etc., or
puzzling over our electricity consumption and subsequent
battery issues.

Today we ran no errands. We walked around the beautiful
little town of St. Anne, which is on the south coast of
Martinique and is touristy, but not too touristy. It
took about ten minutes to tour both streets, after
which we followed a hiking trail along the edge of the
ocean for an hour or so, passing one beautiful, empty
cove after another. When we were ready to stop, we
picked an empty beach, swam a little, sat on our
towels, and read a recent People magazine that some
friends were given by their guests.

From this we know several important things: even though
we have never watched a single episode of "American Idol,"
we are still sick of it, and even though I had never
heard of Lindsey Lohan before today, I am sick of her
too. She was just about on every page of the magazine.
Who is she? What does she do? Nothing, as far as I can
tell. Why do we care?

Speaking of batteries, we reached a new level of budget
cruiser authenticity this week, as we were walking by
the used boat battery receptacle at a fancy marina
(we weren't staying in the marina, we just used their
dock for our dinghy), and Dean started to salivate
over the used batteries. "You know," he said, "those
fancy boats replace their batteries after a year. I
bet some of these are still good." So we contemplated
returning a little later with a battery tester.
Laziness won out over cheapness, however, and we left
the used batteries alone.

Martinique is fabulous, another wonderful French
island with beautiful, steep, lush mountains, good
snorkeling, and clear, warm water. I enjoy butchering
the language. Those of you who would like to visit but
require adequate shoreside facilities should look into
meeting us in Martinique on the return trip. This area
along the south coast has a number of resorts and hotels
within spitting distance of our anchorage. The dollar,
however, does not get you very far against the euro, and
I keep having to remind myself to add thirty percent to
any prices I see.