This anchorage is reluctantly covered in the Doyle guide, and glowingly described in a Compass article by Don Street. It is one of 50+ East coast anchorages described in the French Guide de La Martinique by Jérôme Nouel, most of them somewhat tough to access. Since the entrance is down wind and down wave, unmarked, with plenty of reefs and "basses" (shallows), it does require some attention.
All the same, the entrance was quite imposing, with no visible channel and reefs and rocks breaking everywhere. Following Doyle's and Nouet's instructions, we got as far as the inner bar, where we began registering depths of less than 4 feet. Panic (our draft is about 5.5 feet) was followed by confusion (we were still moving, not stuck fast in sand or mud). At first, we thought perhaps the sounder was registering a layer of weeds as the bottom. Then, it occurred to us that, with no instructions to the contrary, the newly installed instrument was reporting the depth from the transponder in the hull, not from the waterline. At any rate, we decided not to brave the inner coves without reliable depth measurement, so dropped anchor in about 10 feet tucked in to the West of Islet Hardy, one of a group of bird sanctuary islets that guard the outer entrance.
Once a day-catamaran departed, only two other sailboats remained in the anchorage. The water was turquoise, the anchorage breezy and cool (and slightly rolly due to currents), and the inner mangrove estuary (which we explored by dinghy) serene and beautiful. It is forbidden to approach within 100 meters of Islet Hardy, but we enjoyed watching and listening to the thousands of birds who live there.
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