Our Grand Adventure

6th November 2025 | Odometer: 299nm | Martinique

We woke up early the next day, after an uneventful night and a bad sleep and headed north to Martinique. The winds were forecast at a sustained 16 knots gusting up to 20 knots. This was definitely the upper limit of our comfort zone! 

We have continued tracking our “Sea State Stress” as we make our passages. This has been such a helpful way of communicating to each other how we are coping with what’s going on. Here is a rough guide to how it goes…

• 1 = Low Stress – “I could cook in this!” 
• 2 = Paying Attention – I probably can’t cook and you kinda need to pay attention to how the boat is moving. 
• 3 = It’s On – you can’t really do anything else, need to pay attention constantly and regularly holding on for balance. Things are going to fall about everywhere.
• 4 = Oh My God – I actually say OhMy God out loud, you are hanging with white knuckles.
• 5 = I don’t know what 5 is but I don’t ever want to get there.

We had only been through a 4 once before – in the “hell zone” just north of the Canouan point. This trip was the second time we both got to a 4. We knew we were on the upper limit of our comfort. We knew this would be a challenging trip. We had even prepped ourselves mentally for the option of turning back if it was too much. And still… it was … not great. 

We started out aiming for Le Marin on the south east coast of Martinique but found ourselves getting rolled and tossed about by a fairly rough sea state. The swells were large and very choppy, and had to turn nose into the swells to try and make it more bearable.

We could see on the chart that we were barely making any progress in the right direction despite how intense it was to head upwind. It felt like the intensity was building along with my blood pressure. The waves were getting bigger and hitting harder. We were now an hour out of Saint Lucia and going back was going to be challenging, but going forward the time estimate was creeping up and up… 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours… 😬

I generally snap first in these scenarios. I told Ryan we either change destination to a downwind location or we go back – there was no way I could handle a level 4 sea state stress for the predicted five hours without some sort of mental breakdown. We decided to turn downwind and head towards Fort-De-France on the west coast of Martinique for ten minutes. If conditions improved we would continue, otherwise in ten minutes we would turn back.

Thankfully, ten minutes into the new heading, the waves and boat feeling had improved a bit, meaning it was a super uncomfortable passage rather than a terrifying one. We had lots of wind, big waves from the north east with an additional cross wave from the south east. The boat was riding high up onto the peaks then wallowing sideways from the back through to the front down the side of the swells. It’s hard to describe the sensation of falling backwards from behind whilst moving forwards across a crest then fully falling sideways, only to immediately flick back sharply to the other side. Occasionally a set of waves would conspire to really roll us from side to side resulting in some intense hanging on! Neither of us really relaxed for at least the next couple of hours and each hour was greeted with a sense of relief we were another hour through, a bit of despair at how much further we had as well as determination to just get there.

In hindsight this was very much the absolute upper conditions of a passage to be attempted in our boat. I don’t know that we would set out in 16knots of wind again; and I think we will be waiting for 10-15knot conditions for all future passages. Were we wrong to go in these conditions? Maybe, I don’t know. The saying about trawlers is that the people will break before the boat does – it certainly feels true!

Anse D’Arlet, Martinique

We made it to Martinique! A French island, and it feels like a breath of European air! We checked in online and not a single boat vendor has approached us since our arrival. We were ready to just sleep for a week after the last two passages and a few sleepless nights!

We wound up pulling into an earlier anchorage, Grand Anse D’Arlet, along the way as we were both exhausted. What an unexpected win this was! It is a beautiful bay, with a lot of delightful snorkelling all around the edges. Some cute little shopfronts and a fun beachfront make it a really enjoyable spot with quite a few holiday homes around.

Martinique is a totally different vibe to everywhere we have been so far. It’s people are wealthy, it’s French, (yacht) tourism is not the main income and it really does feel like we teleported to Europe overnight.

We really enjoyed doing absolutely nothing in this spot. Swimming and just enjoying the area was lovely.

Ryan did a bit of snorkelling and said that it was the best snorkelling on the trip so far! It’s all improving a bit as we head North out of the hurricane zone from 2024.

While we were there, the lead yachts started arriving on the horizon from the Transat Café L’Or Le Havre Normandie, a double-handed transatlantic race from Le Havre, France, to Fort-de-France, Martinique. This race had made a few headlines back in October as several of the racing catamarans had flipped earlier in the race in some wild weather conditions near Portugal. We also got the chance to see these up close at the finishing dock in Fort-de-France.

Ryan would have been drooling over these boats for the whole day if I hadn’t eventually dragged him away haha.

During our whole time in Martinique these boats kept trickling in as the rest of the competitors in the four boat classes (ULTIM, IMOCA, Ocean Fifty, and Class40) completed the various crossings undertaken. The routes range from 3700nm to 6200nm depending on class of boat. That’s some crazy brave folks out there with just two people onboard racing these boats.

One morning we decided to take what we thought was a casual hike over to the next bay. Both of us just wore our pluggers only to find it was just slightly harder than casual 😅. We ended up slopping through mud and rocks barefoot; and got a few laughs from the far better prepared hikers we passed going the other way! Thankfully there was a delicious boulangerie on the other side where we got our first french baguettes! 🤤 We took the easy route back via the road!

The chill was really appreciated after St Vincent, St Lucia and the hard crossing over. We both really enjoyed it and had a great time here.