As soon as the ARC stuff was over we headed north to Martinique, which gave us time for a quick shopping trip to Marin to stock up on French bread, wine and cheese, also Jambon de Noel and other goodies for Christmas. Then on to Grande Anse d’Arlet for Christmas Day – we spent Christmas 2015 and 2016 here too. There are still turtles swimming about, good snorkelling and lots of boats. We sailed on round the coast to Fort de France the capitol. The anchorage is behind Fort St Louis, and this time we managed to get on a tour of the fort. Much of it is still an active Naval base. We returned to Fort de France for the New Year fireworks which strangely take place on the evening of December 30th. They are set off from the fort so in the anchorage (which by this time was very full and small boats were buzzing around everywhere) we had a ringside view. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more spectacular display. On the 31st we went on to St Pierre at the north end of the island. This was the capital that was destroyed in 1902 by the eruption of Mont Pelee killing something like 28,000 people. One man survived in the town jail. Only one ship of the many anchored in the bay managed to get away with only half the crew alive, the rest were sunk. We looked at the ruins and went round the museum which has been recently refurbished and is very good. The restaurants seemed to be closed so we saw the new year in on Timshel. The church bells rang out at midnight and we contributed our foghorn and Auld Lang Syne (that Andrew was streaming on Spotify).

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