Les Saintes

Hi everyone! Once again, no pictures will be posted today because of my limited Internet connection! I will email this blog from my phone when we go to the restaurant tonight. Pics will follow next week when we get to Dominica.

We are in Les Saintes with Aspen (Maria and Steve) and now Tarentela (Al and Michele). Al and Michele were enjoying company up in the USVI and BVI and have now joined up with us as we travel south.

We did a nice hike up to Le Chameau Lookout tower yesterday. It took us a couple of hours in the heat and reward was a spectacular view! I have to say though, that Steve, the runner, has run to the top every day since we arrived! So, enough about bragging about getting to the top of that mountain!

We have been warned by our friend and weather guru that we can expect winds from the west by Thursday. This may not sound unusual to you, but typically the trade-winds blow from the east and northeast, and usually quite briskly during the winter months. We all anchor on the west sides of islands to get out of the rough seas and winds. This prediction for Thursday means that the winds will blow directly into the anchorages with fetch from a long ways off! We have decided that since we're holding tight to a mooring ball in The Saintes, that we will stay put until after the winds straighten out and then we'll head off for Dominica, a 4 hour sail from here. The winds have been peculiar down in the Caribbean all season. We haven't had such light and unpredictable winds for all the years we've been sailing here.
as well, there has been no North component to the wind making it difficult to move in a south or east direction to return to our regular chain of islands. We have motored, rather than sailed to most of the destinations.

Laurie might have explained earlier that while up in the BVI, we had a major failure with our wind generator. When we arrived in St. Martin, we had a company look at it, diagnose it and replace the motherboard on it. The mechanic said that he tested it and it was producing electricity, however, when Laurie and I get it put back up on the pole (no small feat), the darn thing DIDN'T work! It had a complete dead short! Off it came again, and we had to head south to our next destination. Laurie spent several hours reading the instruction sheets supplied with the new motherboard and finally gathered up enough nerve to tear the thing apart. He found that the mechanic had bent the insulator sheet in half so that much of the back of the motherboard was touching where it shouldn't be. (Laurie would have described this in much more detail!) He put it all back together, and voila, it is back up and humming along making electricity to keep the batteries topped up between fridge demands and electronics! He has yet to email the mechanic, but it was sloppy work that might have cost us 1400.00 US for a replacement wind generator. The 500.00 US we spent for the new parts and labour were enough to endure!

I was swimming the other day at the Pigeon Island anchorage in Guadeloupe when I ran across a lovely, huge turtle. He had a remora stuck to his back and was coming toward me, which is unusual, but made sense when I saw that he had a few swimmers following him. I took a quick dive and got a great frontal shot of him with my underwater camera. By then the hitch-hiking remora had moved from the turtle's back to his belly. One of my best shots for sure! By the time I got back to the boat, I discovered 3 more of these beastly remoras under the boat looking for their next hitching host! Laurie had already seen them and was long gone from the water! I was quick to follow! By the way, these remoras are about 4 feet long, look like a shark and have a big oval on the back of their head that can suction onto you for a quick ride from here to there! We saw many of them up in the BVI and USVI's but were certain that they were an 'up north' thing because we hadn't seen any in our travels in the southern part of the island chain. The sighting the other day makes us think that they've moved here too!

Off to our favourite French Pizza joint for dinner tonight where you can get Poulet Columbo (curried chicken) pizza, our favourite! Of course, here in the French Islands, wine goes with everything!

We are doing our best to meet up with Brian and my sister Lorna in Dominica (s/v Peace and Plenty), but you should go to their weblog to catch up on their rigging troubles! You will find the link to their blog on this blog page!

Cheers, Dawn (and Laurie)


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