Martinique & Guadeloupe

Martinique and Guadeloupe run the same charter week two different ways. Martinique is the hub: Le Marin holds the largest concentration of charter yachts anywhere in the Caribbean, Fort-de-France carries the Creole-colonial architecture, and St-Pierre sits hushed under the volcano that erased it in under two minutes in 1902. Cross north past Dominica and the water turns quieter — Les Saintes' horseshoe bay ranks among the world's finest, Marie-Galante still turns its cane fields into rum at three working distilleries, and Deshaies, a fishing village long before it was a television detective's fictional patch, closes the week on Basse-Terre's calmer coast. All of it under one flag and one currency, and, since 2019, a charter VAT waiver found nowhere else in the French Caribbean.

“The bay at Terre-de-Haut is inducted into the Club des Plus Belles Baies du Monde, the world's most beautiful bays — some rank it third of all of them.”

Signature anchorages

South to north across two French islands, Dominica's peaks passed abeam somewhere in the middle.

• Le Marin & Fort-de-France BayLe Marin, deep in a sheltered cul-de-sac on the south coast, is the largest yacht-charter base in the Caribbean — some 800 berths and around 100 moorings, up to 60m LOA (length overall) and 4.8m draught, with 15 berths held for superyachts. Fort-de-France Bay, 30km north, anchors under the walls of Fort Saint-Louis in a bay ranked among the world's most beautiful since 2011; holding is sand and seaweed, and the only marina on the bay, at Pointe du Bout, takes nothing over 19m.
• Grande Anse d'ArletA church aligned dead-on with its pier and the horizon — one of Martinique's most photographed views — over a bay thick with seagrass where green turtles graze; holding can be patchy, so give the anchor time to set. Diamond Rock, the 175m islet the Royal Navy commissioned as a sloop-of-war in 1804 and held for a year against the French, stands offshore to the south.
• St-Pierre, under Mont PeléeAnchor over the wreck field itself — a dozen or more vessels sunk in the pyroclastic flow (a scorching avalanche of gas and ash) of 8 May 1902, which killed close to 30,000 people in under two minutes and left three survivors. The volcano still stands directly over the anchorage; the Frank A. Perret memorial museum tells the story ashore.
• Les SaintesA horseshoe bay off Terre-de-Haut inducted into the Club des Plus Belles Baies du Monde — some rank it third of all of them. Around eighty white mooring buoys fill the bay for a nominal nightly fee; anchoring is possible only beyond the marked field. Fort Napoléon, a 19th-century fort turned museum and cactus garden, watches over it from the ridge above, iguanas included.
• Marie-Galante“La grande galette” — the big pancake, for its flatness — anchor off Saint-Louis (4–8m, sand, good shelter) or Grand-Bourg (5–10m, sand, more exposed); there is no marina anywhere on the island. Three working distilleries — Bielle, Bellevue and Poisson — still turn the cane fields into rum among a hundred-odd surviving windmills.
• DeshaiesA working fishing anchorage on Basse-Terre's calmer north-west coast, sand and rock in 9–12m, sheltered from north through south-east but prone to hard gusts off the hills. Real life doubles as the fictional Honoré here for the BBC's Death in Paradise; the Jardin Botanique de Deshaies, used for several of its scenes, is worth the walk regardless.

Beyond the anchorage

Rum, volcanic history, a marine reserve and the two biggest fixtures of the French sailing calendar.

Table & stay ashore

No Michelin inspector has yet made the crossing, but the addresses hold their own regardless.

A week, sketched

Pair with

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