Guadeloupe, Iles des Saintes, & Dominica
We left Antigua last Thursday morning for the 40-mile bash to Guadeloupe. And bash it was, with winds of 20-25knots on the nose as usual. The seas weren't quite as bad as they were on the trip from St Kitts to Antigua, so it was marginally more enjoyable. But one of these days we'll actually sail on a beam reach (wind pretty much perpendicular to the boat), or even with the wind behind us and won't that be a treat!
Guadeloupe is one of 2 large French islands in the Caribbean, the other being Martinique. There are something like 420,000 French living on Guadeloupe, and in a lot of respects is just like a sliver of France in the Caribbean. In fact the French have always considered their colonies as little slices of France, so it's no wonder places like Guadeloupe are so much like France. The British pretty much cut and ran, leaving their former colonies without much in the way of economies to sustain them. Denmark sold its Caribbean colonies. The Spanish lost theirs through revolution or in the Spanish-American War. But the French have maintained their ex-colonies as official overseas departments of France.
We arrived in the little fishing port of Des Haies (pronounced Day Hay). We tried to clear in at customs, but it appeared they were only open from 2PM until 3PM each day. So we retired to the boat, had a nice dinner, and went to bed. Next morning we hit the local boulangerie where we had pain de chocolate and croissants and cafe au lait. The French are very civilized about their food! Afterwards we walked up the hill out of town to the local botanical garden and had a lovely morning enjoying a very well-presented tropical botanical garden. The flowers were gorgeous and hopefully some of the pictures will turn up on our new re-done web site in the photo galleries once Maryann gets around to posting them.
Friday afternoon we left Des Haies, proceeding south down the coast toward Basse Terre, the largest city on the west side of Guadeloupe. But the winds were fluky, coming from all different directions, and occasionally blowing between 25 and 30knots! And Basse Terre looked to be a pretty industrial town, not terribly charming, and with very little local yachting infrastructure. So we decided to keep going the additional 8 miles or so to the Iles des Saintes, a group of 8 small islands off the southern coast of Guadeloupe.
The Isle des Saintes define French island charm in the Caribbean. The main village of Grand-Bourg on Terre de Haut, the largest of the 8 islands was all white buildings with red roofs and just jam-packed with Gallic charm. We arrived just at sunset, dropped our anchor in nearly 40 feet of water (I think the deepest we've yet anchored), and went ashore to get a Friday-night pizza. Our Palo Alto routine included a pizza and movie every Friday night. We've not been able to be consistent with it in the past several months, but it was nice to be back in the routine.
We spent the weekend eating French food, walking to the beach, taking photos of the houses, and climbing up the hill to the requisite fort built high above the town. We didn't seem to accomplish much else, though I suspect Maryann did more than I. Monday we finally checked into customs and immigration. I have to say the French are also quite civilized about this. We filled out the customs declaration form in the town hall. The local gendarmerie (police) faxed the forms off to Point a Pitre, the capital of Guadeloupe, and 25 minutes we had our clearance in and our outbound clearance both.
Yesterday morning we weighed anchor and set out for Dominica, a fairly short 16nm jaunt just south of Iles des Saintes. I went below as I'm liable to do for passages - they aren't particularly exciting, and I find closed eyes keep the dread mal de mer at bay. Midway through Maryann asked for my help on deck - we were seeing winds between 25 and 30knots! And of course, right on the nose. We needed to reef the mainsail to keep the boat somewhat more manageable. After reefing, and about 30 minutes later we completely lost the wind. From very, very gusty to almost nothing, very odd. We motored down to Portsmouth, the first town and anchorage on Dominica.
Dominica (stress on the first syllable!) is one of the least developed of all the Caribbean islands. The people have decided that protecting their islands natural beauty and environment is the only way they're going to keep tourism flourishing, so the island has many nature reserves and the local guides are well-trained and know their natural history. This morning we took a tour up the Indian River with a guide by the name of Albert. Albert was full of info on the flora and fauna as he rowed us up the first 3/4 mile of the river. No engines allowed. The tour was spectacular. It was much like a Disneyland Jungle ride, but this was completely authentic, no plastic and no concrete and no track for the boat to ride on. The jungle was so spooky in places that they actually used it in filming the Pirates of the Caribbean, parts 2 and 3 - it was the jungle home of the voodoo priestess. Hopefully some of the pictures will turn out, despite it being pretty dark back there under the trees.
After the tour we returned to the boat and motored the 16 miles along the western coast of Dominica to the capital of Roseau. We had dinner at what was supposed to be a pretty good Creole restaurant in town, yet again proving that we often eat much better on the boat than ashore (not true of St Barts or Iles des Saintes, though!). Tomorrow we're going to do a short outing to a local waterfall in the morning (when describing Dominica to Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus took a piece of paper, wadded it up, and threw it on the table, saying that the island was similarly sharp peaks and deep valleys). And that brings us up to date. We're expecting some mail and a boat part to fix the aft head to arrive in the next couple of days. After that we're off for Martinique.
Guadeloupe is one of 2 large French islands in the Caribbean, the other being Martinique. There are something like 420,000 French living on Guadeloupe, and in a lot of respects is just like a sliver of France in the Caribbean. In fact the French have always considered their colonies as little slices of France, so it's no wonder places like Guadeloupe are so much like France. The British pretty much cut and ran, leaving their former colonies without much in the way of economies to sustain them. Denmark sold its Caribbean colonies. The Spanish lost theirs through revolution or in the Spanish-American War. But the French have maintained their ex-colonies as official overseas departments of France.
We arrived in the little fishing port of Des Haies (pronounced Day Hay). We tried to clear in at customs, but it appeared they were only open from 2PM until 3PM each day. So we retired to the boat, had a nice dinner, and went to bed. Next morning we hit the local boulangerie where we had pain de chocolate and croissants and cafe au lait. The French are very civilized about their food! Afterwards we walked up the hill out of town to the local botanical garden and had a lovely morning enjoying a very well-presented tropical botanical garden. The flowers were gorgeous and hopefully some of the pictures will turn up on our new re-done web site in the photo galleries once Maryann gets around to posting them.
Friday afternoon we left Des Haies, proceeding south down the coast toward Basse Terre, the largest city on the west side of Guadeloupe. But the winds were fluky, coming from all different directions, and occasionally blowing between 25 and 30knots! And Basse Terre looked to be a pretty industrial town, not terribly charming, and with very little local yachting infrastructure. So we decided to keep going the additional 8 miles or so to the Iles des Saintes, a group of 8 small islands off the southern coast of Guadeloupe.
The Isle des Saintes define French island charm in the Caribbean. The main village of Grand-Bourg on Terre de Haut, the largest of the 8 islands was all white buildings with red roofs and just jam-packed with Gallic charm. We arrived just at sunset, dropped our anchor in nearly 40 feet of water (I think the deepest we've yet anchored), and went ashore to get a Friday-night pizza. Our Palo Alto routine included a pizza and movie every Friday night. We've not been able to be consistent with it in the past several months, but it was nice to be back in the routine.
We spent the weekend eating French food, walking to the beach, taking photos of the houses, and climbing up the hill to the requisite fort built high above the town. We didn't seem to accomplish much else, though I suspect Maryann did more than I. Monday we finally checked into customs and immigration. I have to say the French are also quite civilized about this. We filled out the customs declaration form in the town hall. The local gendarmerie (police) faxed the forms off to Point a Pitre, the capital of Guadeloupe, and 25 minutes we had our clearance in and our outbound clearance both.
Yesterday morning we weighed anchor and set out for Dominica, a fairly short 16nm jaunt just south of Iles des Saintes. I went below as I'm liable to do for passages - they aren't particularly exciting, and I find closed eyes keep the dread mal de mer at bay. Midway through Maryann asked for my help on deck - we were seeing winds between 25 and 30knots! And of course, right on the nose. We needed to reef the mainsail to keep the boat somewhat more manageable. After reefing, and about 30 minutes later we completely lost the wind. From very, very gusty to almost nothing, very odd. We motored down to Portsmouth, the first town and anchorage on Dominica.
Dominica (stress on the first syllable!) is one of the least developed of all the Caribbean islands. The people have decided that protecting their islands natural beauty and environment is the only way they're going to keep tourism flourishing, so the island has many nature reserves and the local guides are well-trained and know their natural history. This morning we took a tour up the Indian River with a guide by the name of Albert. Albert was full of info on the flora and fauna as he rowed us up the first 3/4 mile of the river. No engines allowed. The tour was spectacular. It was much like a Disneyland Jungle ride, but this was completely authentic, no plastic and no concrete and no track for the boat to ride on. The jungle was so spooky in places that they actually used it in filming the Pirates of the Caribbean, parts 2 and 3 - it was the jungle home of the voodoo priestess. Hopefully some of the pictures will turn out, despite it being pretty dark back there under the trees.
After the tour we returned to the boat and motored the 16 miles along the western coast of Dominica to the capital of Roseau. We had dinner at what was supposed to be a pretty good Creole restaurant in town, yet again proving that we often eat much better on the boat than ashore (not true of St Barts or Iles des Saintes, though!). Tomorrow we're going to do a short outing to a local waterfall in the morning (when describing Dominica to Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus took a piece of paper, wadded it up, and threw it on the table, saying that the island was similarly sharp peaks and deep valleys). And that brings us up to date. We're expecting some mail and a boat part to fix the aft head to arrive in the next couple of days. After that we're off for Martinique.
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6:07 PM |
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