A Day At the Races...

This is backtracking a bit, but during our time in Martinique I never got around to writing about our arrival. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed a lovely sail from St. Lucia. We picked out the outer channel markers of Cul-de-sac Marin on Sunday afternoon and headed in. As we looked into the distance to find the next markers, we saw a whole bunch of brightly colored sails. From where we were, they looked like wind surfer sails but they were square on top--- strange. The mystery was solved about a half mile later when we could tell that they were traditional island sailboats, racing. Actually, they were racing right at us, side by side across the entire channel. I picked out a gap to pass through the pack and was heading for it when a motor powered race committee boat approached to wave us off. We turned hard to port and hit the gas (diesel) but I think a few racers still had to maneuver around us. We would have caused less of a disruption if we had stayed where we were but it is hard to hold your ground when people are yelling at you frantically in French.

The race passed by and we reentered the channel and proceeded into Marin. We anchored Crossroads at the edge of the channel and watched the boats head back towards town. Much to our delight, they rounded a mark near the beach and headed back out- a two-lap race. Now we would really get to see some action, and from front row seats. The boats were about 30 feet long with a square fore and aft sail on bamboo spars. They carry a lot of sail for small wooden boat but are able to counter the boat’s desire to flip over with movable ballast. The ballast is in the form of crewmembers that climb out on wood planks that stick out on the windward side of the boat. When the boat turns so that the wind is on the other side (tacking), the crew and boards are shifted to the new windward side. I’m glad we just have a nice big chunk of lead under our boat.

The Sunday traditional boat races add a lot of color to the harbor and its great to see islanders participating in sailing.

Glenn