Now that we are past the first of November, our insurance company has released us from the box they keep us in for hurricane season. We have left the islands of Grenada behind, and traveled north to Martinique, one of the French islands. Our sail up here was fast and fun, and about 20 hours.

Martinique is the home for the Caribbean service base for Amel, the builder of our boat, so the docks are crowded with sister ships. It’s always fun to see the other boats so much like ours, and meet the owners.

Why Martinique? The prices for dock space here are quite inexpensive (~$600/month), the strength of the dollar makes the high prices for consumer goods tolerable. Prices for boating supplies range from surprising bargains, to insanely expensive (€35 for a roll of masking tape???)

We will need to park Harmonie for a few weeks while I (Bill) take off on a delivery job to help a new Amel owner move their boat from Panama to Texas. Right now I am hanging, waiting, for the last of the preparations to be complete in Panama to have the boat ready to go. It should be about a two week trip.

One of the odd things about being here in part of France, is several weeks ago we read a news article about how there was a critical shortage of prepared mustard in France. Seriously. I dismissed this as just another one of those “click-bait” news stories that are everywhere these days and emphasize drama over facts. Except…

This is the “Moutardes” section of the large supermarket here. EMPTY. Not a single bottle. What is the world coming to? Surely a gastronomic crisis!! French cooking without dijon mustard? Sacre bleu! Fortunately, we stocked up when we where in Sint Maartin, so there is no shortage of dijon mustard aboard the good ship Harmonie! We had some in the creamed eggs on the breakfast table this morning.