Sunrise at Le Marin

Waking up early had the benefit of catching the sunrise coming over the boats in the marina. Gavin and I had another early morning walk where we found the main church and many derelict but charming buildings (see extras)

We have not timed our visit to Martinique very well as this week it is the Antilles carnival, and most shops are shut this week. Carnival festivities commence on the first Sunday after Epiphany and reach their climax on Shrove Tuesday, and the carnival officially ends with a procession on Ash Wednesday. There are street parades on weekends throughout this 2 month period and then in the final week they have themed days. Today being Shrove Tuesday people are all wearing red and black as it is known as Devil's Day. 

Despite most of the shops being closed we managed to find a supermarket that was open for a few hours this morning. While it had some gluten free products which surprised me, it also had some very dodgy looking meat products!

We have had a lazy day relaxing on the boat - Gavin took me for a coffee at a restaurant where they had free wifi so I used that opportunity to look at some blip images! The wifi situation has been rather annoying as despite buying a generous amount of data from the marine office it keeps dropping out and is not a very strong signal.

Tomorrow morning we leave to sail up the coast to Fort de France which is the capital of Martinique. There is no marina there so we have to lie at anchorage in a natural bay and get the dinghy to go ashore - and no wifi at all! I am not looking forward to that as it is so windy here I think the boat will be spinning around its anchor all night! These Lesser Antilles islands are known for their strong winds - except I did not know that before we came here! So sailing here is not for the faint hearted!