Today we’re headed back to Grand Anse where we will stay the night and then head back to Le Marin on Sunday. We have a dinner reservation at the well known restaurant just off the beach and we want to do the hike around Morne Champagne to L’Anse d’Arlet.
Winds are light so we decide to try the whisker pole on the way out of the bay. We’ve never flown it or a spinnaker before. It works pretty well tho it takes us a bit to get it hooked up. We’re flying downwind at 6+ kts with just 3/4 genoa up. Cool. As the wind starts to shift eastward we go to take it down. That’s a bit of a challenge even into the wind. It would be far easier if we could mount it on the mast as we intend to do. The thing is about 12 feet long and pretty heavy and with the sail fighting it I’m hanging on for dear life.
Experiment successfully over and both of us still on board we motor sail around the corner into Grand Anse. Find a nice anchorage in the main bay (the south side of the bay has no cell service, therefore no Internet and we both still need that).
Get things settled a bit and then go for our hike across the headlands to the L’Anse d’Arlet. Turns out to be about an hour walk, fairly challenging, fairly hilly and we can see there are quite a few offshoots to the snorkeling bays that we don’t go down. Maybe next time.
L’Anse d’Arlet is actually a much nicer beach and much nicer little town than Grand Anse. We think we were just anchored in the wrong place last time. Next time we may try here for a little longer.
We check out the town a bit, see the market which is OK tho we don’t buy anything. Christy has made us lunch so we have a bite after a cooling swim then pop into one of the many beach-front bars for a cold one. The Loraine is very cold, very refreshing. We chat and generally enjoy ourselves for an hour or so before it is time to head back.
The walk back is pretty hot, it’s 2 or 3 pm and not much wind in the trees. We’re pretty happy to emerge on the other side and head down to the beach.
Decide to have another swim on Grand Anse and walk west to a bar Christy wants to check out. Decide to have a swim here but oops, the water is very rocky here tho you can’t tell that from the beach. Tricky to get in and out without mashing your feet but we do.
In the bar, it is pretty quiet and we order a couple beers, they’re not very cold. Too bad.
Eventually head back to Milu to get cleaned up for dinner. So refreshing to wash with fresh water, getting all the sea- and sweat-salt off and I even shave. (Walking back from L’Anse D’Arlet the sweat was getting in my eyes, even more salty from the sea- very stingy.)
Around dusk we dinghy into the pier. Side note, all these little bays have the same pier construction. They’re very sturdy, very accessible, lots of room, but you need a dinghy anchor. Take the short walk up to the restaurant.
We stumble our orders in our broken French, there is a nice Quebecois couple beside us that offer to translate but we have managed OK. We chat with them while we both have dinner. I have the beef, Christy has the lobster. Both very good, they manage to do a good job with my beef as it is often tough in the islands.
No dessert but I do have an espresso. Then we walk back to Milu and call it a night.