Marin, Martinique

I had been speaking to Furuno France to arrange the replacement of our Wind Indicator which on occasions when switched on just spins constantly and also does not illuminate the wind speed at night. We also had to have the transducer replaced as the depth sounder intermittently sticks on the depth reading which can obviously be dangerous when approaching shallow water. It also does not display the maximum depth indication of --- over 100m, but varies in reading from about 2-4m in these depths which is not as serious but could hide something one day. They had sent the spares to an agent in Martinique, this being a department of France, so presumably would not cost them import duty, despite the fact we were in St. Lucia where there is also a Furuno agent. I had been calling Diginav the agent in Marin who had the spares trying to arrange a solution but the owner was away in France and his son’s English was about as good as my French and we weren’t getting on to well he put down the phone on my first attempt then didn’t pick up after that. I spoke to Furuno France again who were to be fair very helpful but said we’d have to wait until Thursday to speak to the owner.

I finally got through to the owner on Thursday morning who was most unhelpful and said that there was no agent in St. Lucia, I said there was we’d met him and he then changed tack to say he didn’t know this new equipment. He said that we should just sail the 25 miles to Marin and that Furuno France had already had a large bill sending the spares to him and should not have to send them to Martinique – as if they were some how the injured party for supplying us with faulty gear. The guy was actually just very rude and I was fuming by the time I got off the phone and he was obviously just protecting his business rather than being bothered about the customer. However, it was obviously going to be pointless arguing with him and we needed this fixed to be able to move on, so we decided to make the 8 hour round trip to Marin to get this finally fixed and so we set off north.

It was a fairly lumpy trip but Invincible sped along at 6-7 knots all the way so we were soon moored in Marin again in much the same spot as our last visit. We went into town to let Diginav know we’d arrived and make arrangements for the next day when he’d promised to do the work. After waiting in the shop for 15 minutes being ignored as he dealt with another customer, I introduced us and said we’d come to let him know we’d arrived. His response was that he could see that. He then set about making us go through the whole history and symptoms of the case again, although this had already been done and diagnosed and hence the spares sent for the repair. He explained that the spinning needle on the wind indicator was a physical fault due to light sensitivity and that the workaround was to leave the sun cover on starting. This is complete nonsense in my opinion and we have certainly observed that it related more to high windspeeds but he seemed to believe it. We agreed I would collect him at 8.30 the next morning in the tender.

We had a wander round the docks at some of the catamarans there and a charter Mahe 36 to see how it was fairing before heading to the supermarket and back to the boat for the evening. We had a nice picnic dinner with fresh French baguettes in the cockpit under moonlight before retiring to bed after our 6am start and tiring sail. At 4am I was woken by a large squall passing through with high winds causing us to spin on our anchor before it tripped itself and the alarm starting going to say we’d dragged. So we had to reset it in the dark and the rain, not a good preparation to meeting Cheerful Charlie the surly electronics guy the next day.