7-Day Martinique Sailing Itinerary: Sainte-Anne, the Anses d'Arlet, Saint-Pierre & Diamond Rock

The Island That Is Putting Its Anchorages on Buoys

Every Caribbean island manages its seabed; Martinique is doing it fastest. The timeline matters because so many guides, charter briefings and — until this week — our own records describe bays as “free anchoring in sand” that are no longer that:

Underneath all of it is the Parc naturel marin de Martinique, which prohibits anchoring on seagrass and coral anywhere, and the sea-turtle rules that go with it. The practical consequence for a charter week is not cost — the buoys are a few euros a night — but planning: call the Anses d'Arlet agents before you arrive, know where the yellow wreck buoys are at Saint-Pierre, and treat the bays that are still free as full by mid-afternoon.

Before You Slip the Lines

Season. December to May; the Christmas winds blow hardest from mid-December to late January, the flattest water is February to April, and the charter fleets run from November. Hurricane season is June to November.

Clearing in. Online, free, in advance: Martinique is a French département and the demarches-simplifiees.fr “déclaration clearance Antilles” form produces a certificate that an approved clearance point stamps for a €3–5 admin fee — the Le Marin marina office (which has its own portal for clients), or a chandlery or café at Fort-de-France, Saint-Pierre, Sainte-Anne and the Anses d'Arlet. No customs or immigration charges. Clear out before another French island or St Lucia, 25 miles south. EU but not Schengen.

The coast you skip. Martinique's Atlantic side — Le Robert, Le François, Le Vauclin — has reef lagoons, islets and the “Joséphine's bathtub” sandbar that appear in every brochure. It also faces the trade wind and the swell, the reef channels need local knowledge, and since 2011 it has been the coast where sargassum strands: rafts of brown seaweed arrive mainly from April to October, peak in June to August, rot in the bays and give off hydrogen sulphide, and Le Robert and Le François are among the worst-hit communes on the island. December to March is generally clear — but the buoys, the villages and the shelter are all on the Caribbean side, and that is where this week lives.

Every Stop on One Screen

Day 1 — Le Marin to Sainte-Anne (3 nm)

A shakedown, and a good one. Out through the buoyed channel of the Cul-de-Sac du Marin — a mangrove lagoon of hurricane holes where, since the July 2018 order, nobody anchors except under a cyclone alert — and three miles to Sainte-Anne, the island's great free anchorage: a mile of white sand from Pointe Marin to Anse Caritan in 3–7 m with excellent holding, a pretty village with a Saturday market, and up to 400 boats from November to March. Anchor outside the yellow buoys that mark the 300 m swimming band and away from the seagrass patches near the beach; the islets of the Sainte-Anne nature reserve to the south-east (Hardy, Percé, Burgaux, Poirier) carry a 300 m no-anchor ring. The consultation on a mooring zone for this bay runs to January 2026, so enjoy it while it is what it is. Les Salines, the island's most photographed beach, is a walk or a dinghy round the point.

Day 2 — Sainte-Anne to Grande Anse d'Arlet (14 nm)

West along the south coast with the trade wind behind you, past Sainte-Luce and the bay of Le Diamant to Diamond Rock — the 175 m basalt plug the Royal Navy commissioned as HMS Diamond Rock in 1804 and held for seventeen months against the French, a biotope reserve now, reserved for the birds: no landing, no anchoring, ecological buoys for the dive and the snorkel. Then round Cap Salomon into Grande Anse d'Arlet, the best-loved bay on the leeward coast: a wide sandy horseshoe in 4–10 m, sheltered from north through east, a beach of restaurants and a village with a church on the waterfront. It is an organised mooring zone: 113 white buoys since late 2019 (the blue ones are the fishermen's), run by the Espace Sud harbourmaster whose agents you call on VHF 9 or email before you arrive; anchoring is on sand outside the field only, and the seagrass in the bay is turtle pasture — you will see green turtles grazing under the boat. Water, WiFi and a clearance point are at the harbourmaster's office.

Day 3 — Grande Anse to Anse Mitan (6 nm)

A short day with the best swim of the week in the middle. North round the point to the twin coves of Anse Dufour and Anse Noire — one golden sand, one black, a headland apart — where the turtles come in to the seagrass a few metres off the beach. Room for three or four boats, approach from the north, anchor on sand only, and go in by dinghy with fins; this is the island's turtle beach and the rules about not chasing or touching them are enforced by everyone on it. Then across the mouth of Fort-de-France Bay to Anse Mitan at Trois-Îlets, the resort peninsula opposite the capital: a large free anchorage in 3–8 m of sand with usually room to spare, the Pointe du Bout marina next door, and a ferry every half hour across to Fort-de-France — the way to see the city, because the Baie des Flamands off the town is now restricted along the Fort Saint-Louis strip under the September 2025 order and is a working port besides. Keep 50 m clear of the ferry pontoon and out of its channel.

Day 4 — Anse Mitan to Saint-Pierre (15 nm)

North up the leeward coast, past the capital and the fishing villages of Case-Pilote and Bellefontaine, with the wind coming and going in the lee of the Pitons du Carbet, to Saint-Pierre under Mont Pelée. On 8 May 1902 the volcano destroyed the “Paris of the Caribbean” in about two minutes, killed some 28,000 people and sank the ships in the roadstead; the town that grew back among the ruins is small, quiet and extraordinary, and the wrecks are among the great dives of the Caribbean. The anchorage is a narrow shelf of black sand and ash in 8–20 m that drops away steeply into very deep water, sheltered from east through south and open to the west and to northerly swell. Since January 2025 an organised zone of 74 paid buoys has been going in, with yellow buoys marking the 1902 wrecks as no-anchor areas; the field was vandalised through 2025, so look at what is actually there, take a buoy if one is sound, and otherwise anchor on the shelf clear of the marks. Ashore: the ruins of the theatre and the prison cell of the survivor Cyparis, the volcano museum, and the Depaz distillery on the slopes.

Day 5 — Saint-Pierre to Petite Anse d'Arlet (19 nm)

The return down the coast, standing well off a shore that drops straight into deep water, with Pelée behind you and the Anses d'Arlet headlands ahead. Rather than the buoy field again, tuck into Petite Anse d'Arlet, the quieter sister bay a mile south: a fishing village, 3–8 m of sand with good holding, the same shelter from north through east, no buoy field yet and a beach restaurant or two. Anchor clear of the coral patches under the headlands and of the fishermen's lines. If the trade wind is up and the swell is wrapping round, Grande Anse's buoys are a mile away.

Day 6 — Petite Anse to Diamond Rock to Sainte-Anne (17 nm)

South round Cap Salomon and east along the Diamant coast to lunch at Anse Cafard, 4–10 m of sand under the Rock with the Cap 110 memorial — twenty white stone figures facing the sea for the slave ship wrecked here in 1830 — on the headland above. It is open to the west and south-west and not a night in this itinerary; the Rock's ecological buoys are for the swim. Then the last real leg, ten miles east along the south coast against the trade wind — the only beat of the week — back to Sainte-Anne for a second night, arriving in time to find a space.

Day 7 — Sainte-Anne to Le Marin (3 nm)

Three miles, with a detour if the morning is calm: out to the Sainte-Anne islets for a look (300 m off, no anchoring), or round the point to Les Salines for a last swim. Then into the Cul-de-Sac, fuel at the barge, and the marina by early afternoon.

Why an Anchor Alarm Matters on This Route

Martinique adds two situations to the Caribbean set on this site. The first is the shelf. At Saint-Pierre — and at Le Carbet, Case-Pilote and most of the leeward coast — the anchorage is a ledge of volcanic sand a few hundred metres wide that ends in a drop to 100 or 200 m. You anchor in 12 m near the inner edge; the boat lies out over the drop. Everything about the geometry is unforgiving: if the anchor is disturbed it slides downhill, towards the edge, and once it goes over there is no bottom to catch it in — a boat that drags at Saint-Pierre does not fetch up on a beach, it drifts out to sea. The alarm here is not an early warning. It is the only warning. Centre it on the anchor, size it for rode plus boat with no margin for a downhill slide, and treat a single alert as an order to start the engine.

The second situation is the buoy itself. Three of this week's seven nights are on one, and the reflex is to turn the alarm off because the mooring is somebody else's problem. It is the opposite: on a buoy you have given up the one thing you could check yourself — the set of your own anchor — for a strop and a sinker you have not seen, in a field that at Saint-Pierre has had its lines cut on purpose. Set 40 m centred on the buoy, leave it on, and you will know within a boat-length if the thing you tied to has let go. The method for both cases is in our guide to telling if the anchor is dragging, and the scope calculator turns 12 m on the shelf into the radius.

Variations: 5 Days, 10 Days, or South to St Lucia

• Five days: Sainte-Anne, Grande Anse d'Arlet, Anse Mitan, Petite Anse, Sainte-Anne — the south and the Anses without the run north. You lose Saint-Pierre, which is the day most people remember.
• Ten days: two nights at Saint-Pierre (the Depaz distillery and the volcano need a day), a night at Le Carbet on the way, and — in the December to March window only, with a skipper who knows the channels — the Atlantic side: Le François's islets and the Baignoire de Joséphine, or Le Robert's lagoon, entered through the buoyed passes with the sun high.
• South to St Lucia: clear out online at Le Marin or Sainte-Anne and it is 25 nm across the Saint Lucia Channel to Rodney Bay — a different country, with SailClear and its own fees. Many Le Marin charters are sold as this one-way, with the Pitons at the far end.

The Bottom Line

Seventy-seven miles, seven nights, one volcano and the easiest week in the Caribbean series — short legs in flat water on the leeward side of an island with boulangeries at every dinghy dock. What it asks of you is organisation of a new kind: know which bays are buoy fields now, book the Anses d'Arlet agents, find the yellow wreck buoys at Saint-Pierre before you drop, and arrive at Sainte-Anne with the afternoon in hand.

And on the shelf under Pelée, in 12 m of black sand with the drop a boat-length astern, set the circle tight, centre it on the anchor, and let it watch the edge for you. Every stop on this route is in our Martinique anchorage guide.