Coastalsurvey

From: Fring
Date: Thu Jan 31, 2002
Subject: Re: [kooks] Martinique

This was my second foray into the French West Indies with the family. If you remember, last June I reported on Guadeloupe.

Accommodations:

We stayed at Surfside Studios at the tip of the Caravelle peninsula near Tartane on the east coast. Surfside is run by Chris Schaefer (American surfer originally from Miami) and his wife Sylvie, they live above the two rental apartments literally steps away from the main surfing beach – Petite Plage, also known as plage du surfeurs – surfer’s beach.

Surfside Studios is very clean, comfortable, quiet, self-sufficient, had
everything we needed. We like to cook at home and it was easy to do in the
fully-outfitted kitchen. We only went out to eat once during the entire
time. Chris and Sylvie were very helpful and friendly and their two kids, stopped in occasionally to play with our daughter. There is also a nice pool at Surfside in the back yard.

Chris had reserved a rental car for us right in Tartane, it made things easy,
since Sylvie picked us up at the airport, we didn’t have to go through the
routine of taking the bus to the rental car area, getting the rental car,
driving it back to the passenger pickup area and loading the boards and
family in . . .  Sylvie picked us up, boards, baby and all, brought us to the
Studios, then gave me a lift to the local car rental place (Location-Caravelle) where I picked up the little two door Renault Clio that served us well throughout the trip. The process was reversed on the way
home, Chris gave us a lift to the airport after dropping off the car. If
you’ve ever traveled with a little kid and surfboards, you can understand
the advantages of this!

The Surf:

Let me start by saying that the surf was never crowded while I was there,
most days I waited until the afternoon to surf because I didn’t want to surf
alone. I met no American surfers except Chris, the owner of Surfside.
Everyone was friendly and fun to surf with, did not encounter any attitude,
quite the opposite. If you want to go to a place and surf alone or with a
few people all day, this is the island for you!

The relatively small area of Tartane is rich with surf breaks, all within
minutes of each other. Besides Petite Plage, which breaks right and left,
there is Pelle-a-tarte to the east which is a hollower, dumpier wave.
Pelle-a-tarte was not working well while I was there because of the winds,
more on that later. All the breaks are reef breaks.

I surfed Petite Plage almost every day, longboard and shortboard. It is a
somewhat forgiving, but thick wave, reminiscent of Parlor in Barbados. The
rights were pretty long when lined up, the lefts were shorter and snappier.
Getting in and out wasn’t too bad, just a little hop over the inside reef.
Petite plage was an easy wave to duckdive, even when big. One side of the
break is often used by the local surf school where groups of kids and adults
could be seen on the weekend riding the whitewater on Bic-style plastic
boards.

West of Surfside is a wide bay with a beautiful beach called Anse l’etang.
There are three major breaks, the right is called V.V.F., and on the other
side of the bay, the left is called Cocoa. I loved the right, a nice, big,
sweeping long wave, rode the longboard there. Cocoa, the left, is more
sucking up, more serious, a definite shortboard spot, I rode my 6’8″ there.
The spot in the middle of the bay is called Entre deux, which means “between
the two”. I didn’t surf it, but it had some nice lefts and rights.

Continuing further west along the peninsula is the Bay of Tartane which also
seems to have some surfable spots, but probably are hardly ever ridden
because of the proximity of the other, better breaks.

Up the coast there are several other breaks, Anse Charpentier, Grand Riviere,
Basse Pointe. I saw Charpentier, but it was a giant heaving closeout because
of the wind when I was there. Anse Trabaud is a shorebreak type wave on the
southeast coast (it’s not shown correctly on the map) that we visited, not
worth the miles of dirt and sand road to get to. Another break on the
northwest coast that takes a real north swell to break (the same type of
swell that makes Sandy Lane and Tropicana fire on Barbados) is Anse Ceron.
There were small background lines pushing in when I was there, barely
rideable, but you could see the potential for when the real thing comes along.

The island takes swell from the north, northeast and east. The beginning of
the week was mostly a northeast swell, a little overhead on Sat and Sun,
dropping through the week until thurs night, when the swell was more easterly and got bigger, a few feet overhead on friday night (big enough!).

The Alizes winds were blowing while I was there, a northeast/east flow which
is kinda sideshore on most breaks. Typically, the winds are more
southeasterly, which is technically offshore for the beaches on the
peninsula, but the waves actually end up being total glass because the height
of the island blocks the wind. The right at V.V.F. works good during the
Alizes because it is somewhat protected. On some days the wind eased up in
the evening which made for fun sessions at Petite Plage.

The Island

Martinique has the advantage of being a part of France along with Guadeloupe and St. Barth’s and St. Martin. This shows itself in many ways on the island — modern infrastructure of roads and electric. Potable tap water. Very little litter. Not too much apparent poverty like you see on some islands.Currency was the franc, now it’s the Euro. Language is French, the more you know before you go, the better! Learn some before you go.

The Tartane area is pretty sleepy, there’s a few beachside restaurants, and
some European style accommodations, but no night life to speak of (not that we were looking for any since we were with the kid). Surfside Studios is
located adjacent to a nature preserve where we ran every morning up to the
lighthouse, there’s good hiking in there as well.

We made it to the south end of the island one day, to Anse Salines, probably
the most famous tourist beach on Martinique. It was mobbed with French
vacationers, we just hung out for a while on the beach there. It would seem
that there is plenty of night life down there in the Trois Islets or Diamant
area with all those tourists around. They have bikini vendors on Anse
Salines – girls who walk around with a basket full of bikinis, if you want to
see them in one of the bikinis, they take off the one they have on and put on
the other one. Right there on the beach. Viva la France!

The interior of the island is of interest because of Mt. Pelee, which erupted
in 1902 and wiped out 30,000 people in St. Pierre. There are still some
ruins in St. Pierre that you can see. The island is very mountainous because
of it’s volcanic origins and there is some great scenery and vistas when
traveling around. The beaches on the northwest side have black volcanic
sand.

Air France is the only major airline flying into Martinique right now.
American and LIAT (Trinidadian) pulled out after Sept. 11. We took Air
France out of Miami. No charge for surfboards.

The Wrap

I would consider Martinique a good kOOk destination – plentiful waves, a good variety of surf, empty breaks, no American surfers around, very French (if you like that!). It has a reputation of being an expensive trip, but aside
from the airfare (which we minimized by using Delta mileage for my ticket)
you could stay at the relatively inexpensive Surfside Studios and keep costs
under control by not eating out too much. I ended up selling both of my
boards before I left which also helped offset our costs.

We plan to go back to Martinique, probably late next year. This November
we’re planning to go back to Guadeloupe.