Marc saves the day (twice) in Martinique

Thursday, Feb. 27th didn’t start out all that badly, except that we were waiting (and have been for three days while the island celebrates Carnival) for a technician to remove our windlass motor and attempt to rebuild it. Marc, the technician, is a great guy! Very competent and very good at speaking English, more than can be said for most we’ve met so far in Martinique. Not that my French is all that good but I’m trying to learn and use it and I think when you serve an international crowd of sailors, you should have at least the will to communicate in whatever ways are necessary. But, I digress...

After Marc left with our motor, I had the brilliant idea to go to the nearby supermarket, (15 minutes by car, I was told), which was supposed to be much bigger and well stocked compared to the local grocery store we have been frequenting. Since we have a guest coming, we needed to stock up and we haven’t been able to find some of the basics like chicken breasts, pork chops, sliced ham, etc. We find lots of good cheese and bread but other than that, all we find is giant bags of ribs, chicken wings, and other animal body parts that are less identifiable. Fresh fruits and vegetables are available on market days but you need to use them immediately or they go bad. I digress again...

We hired a cab to get to the supermarket, which took 20 minutes, with all the traffic, and cost 20 euro (a little more than $20). The driver told us to hang out at the taxi stand or just call him back when we were done so we picked through what we could find in, yes a much bigger store, but just with more of the same unidentifiable parts. When we were finished shopping, we checked the taxi stand to find only one taxi that was on call waiting for someone. I called the taxi that brought us to the market and whomever answered said they did not speak English and hung up. I had a few other taxi numbers to call and got the same result so I went to the store ‘information’ center. No one spoke English there either, but they knew someone in the office that did. I schlepped over to the office and the English speaking lady there wanted 10 euro just to call a cab. Ok, I’m desperate so I give her 10 euro only for her to tell me after making a two calls, that there were no taxis available. Apparently, everyone is tired from Carnival and no one is working today!

I’m getting to my wits end, imagining Andrew and I sleeping in the grocery store parking lot with our bags of groceries, when it occurred to me to call our English speaking technician, Marc. Marc saved the day! He called a taxi driver friend who showed up in 10 minutes. We had a brief tussle with a French lady who tried to jump in the car before us but when the driver asked specifically for me, she retreated. Somehow, we made it back to the boat in about 10 minutes and I couldn't have been happier to be on board having bread and cheese for dinner again, along with a stiff drink!!

The next day, Marc calls and says that he and his technician have fixed the windlass. They took it apart completely, found the brushes were destroyed, replaced them with brushes they cut down from another motor and put the whole thing back together again. Marc installed it in about an hour and a half and it works better than ever!

What a life saver!! Thank goodness we met Marc.