Islet de Gosier, Guadeloupe

Dawn here...

We have no internet here in Gosier, but will attempt to send this blog by Ham Radio. We haven't had to use it this year, so I'll attempt to reacquaint myself with all the settings and wires etc.

We left Saint Francois on Friday morning in high winds. The winds have been blowing hard all through the island chain making it difficult to move around from bay to bay. Sailing from one island to another is totally out of the question! When we arrived in Saint Francois, we knew that it was a tricky spot to get into, with markers indicating the channel to get in between the reefs. The guide book, Chris Doyle's, told us that we would be pushed in quickly with the current and breaking waves, but then we'd have to fight it all to get back out. He suggested that if the motor were to quit on the exit, then it would mean serious consequences. Of course, as we sat there at anchor, we watched the wind increase over the 3 days and also watched several boats pound their way out to sea. Then, it was our turn. Laurie started both engines and before we knew it, we were committed. It was a bit hairy, but within 15 minutes, we were on the outside with the normal high seas and waves. It's often the edges of the ocean that are the killers, not the ocean itself!

We headed for Saint Anne, which was only a couple hours along the coast and familiarized ourselves with the drawings in the guide and how it was laid out. Again, reefs were going to be an issue and the winds were strong and waves were breaking all over the place. We looked through the binoculars before we started the channel to discover that only ONE boat was anchored in at this popular spot. My vote was NO, we should carry on, but the captain won this one and in we went. Kite surfers were everywhere along with windsurfers trying to get air lifted along the edge of the coral in the breaking waves. The channel was narrow and full of these living, breathing obstacles! Once inside, we realized that it just as rough inside as out and a squall was upon us. Out came the rain coats as we headed back out through the channel.

Once outside, we decided upon Gosier, a little island outside the capital city which is slightly out of the stronger winds and waves. We dropped our hook amoung 30 other boats. The island is a real touristy place with water taxis delivering 20 people at a time all day long. Power boats come and go and it's a crazy place until the sun goes down. Swimming just at the back end of our boat was dangerous because of all the traffic. We haven't left the boat since we arrived because of boats coming and going and boats dragging anchors. It's just not safe.

This morning we listened to the weather on the Ham Radio and the discussion that followed, and it would seem that the winds will continue to be abnormally high until at least Wednesday. We plan to stay here for a couple more days and then make the 3 mile sail into Point a Pitre and await Hugh and Liz from home who will stay with us until Sunday, the 11th. Our time is being spent, pleasantly enough, with boat chores, reading and watching movies. We don't watch many movies on Cat Tales, however, we have power to spare with our wind mill cranking out more electricity than we can use.

Marie Gallant and now in Saint Francois

We sailed from Les Saintes to the little island Marie Gallant, part of Guadeloupe, with 'Tiger Lily' (Denis and Arlene) from Canada. They have been sailing the Caribbean for many many years and we always love to run into them. The destination was almost straight upwind, and we spent a good 7 hours banging and tacking; and actually enjoyed it for the most part. We worked hard in winds from 18 to 23 knots apparent, and played the wind shifts as well as we could. At least nothing broke.

We arrived at Grand Bourg and spent a couple days there, one of which included renting a car with Denis and Arlene. For 39 Euros, you can get a car for the day and run out of road before you run out of time!! Along with many windmills originally designed to crush sugar cane years ago, we saw a couple of rum distilleries and mile after mile of sugar cane.


A stop at lunch time got us to a nice restaurant with a view of the ocean! Curried goat (Dawn), red snapper (Laurie) and octopus (Denis and Arlene) were all delicious! Beer couldn't have been served any colder!


Denis, Arlene and Laurie and I found a part of Canada here in Marie Gallant!


These sea gulls lined up nice and pretty for picture taking!


Soon after arriving in Marie Gallant, Laurie and I saw many posters advertising the oxen parade to be held on Tuesday, February 21, a part of their annual Carnival celebrations. We moved to the bay next to the competition, walked the mile or two on land, and waited a couple of hours before seeing the first 'float' off in the distance. Our excitement soon dwindled as the driver of each cart beat the poor animals mercilessly with heavy whips in order to move the massive creatures up and down dirt and paved roads. They had already been walking for more than 3 hours before we saw them along the coast and we were very saddened by the event. Our smiles turned upside down quickly and we rushed back to the boat after the last cart went by us. Maybe this is the way it always was between humans and beasts of burden; but we were too soft to enjoy the spectacle.










Three judges were in a great discussion after each entry in the competition as the oxen went by. We were so struck by the whipping, dehydration, hooves slipping uphill and downhill on the pavement etc. to be too impressed by what the judges thought were the winning qualities of the animals and drivers!


In Port Louis, Marie Gallant, we met with the sailing vessel 'Charlotte D.' out of Cape Breton. We have met them several times over the past few years and enjoyed their company for a beach walk and a 3 hour lunch at a beach bar restaurant. This is Peter looking pretty happy with his crayfish.


The crew of s/v Charlotte D, Catherine and Peter.


This classic sailboat came along the coast of Guadeloupe in the middle of a big race out of Antigua called the Caribbean 600. We watched about 6 beasts go by, but then this monster tacked offshore and headed directly for us. We had to veer off to avoid him but he's much bigger than us and in the midst of a big 600 mile race which will take the winner 2 1/2 days and the looser 6 or 7 days! What a beauty!




We're off to explore Saint Francois in the morning and will likely stay here for 3 nights. There are kite surfers, wind surfers everywhere! Let's hope nothing gets tangled in our rig!
When we leave here, we'll spend a couple days in Saint Anne and then move to the capital of Guadeloupe, Point a Pitre. We'll do a few repairs aboard and await Hugh and Liz' visit with us on March 3rd.

Marie Galante

Sorry, no pics ready. We're sitting in a Wifi cafe, but not drinking coffee, in Grand Bourg. If we get a fire under us, we'll be moving over to Saint Louis, on the same island. Where we are is rolly, even for a cat, and Saint Louis has the promise of a big, flat, picturesque bay with clear water.

We tacked over here from the Saintes a few days ago with Denis and Arlene of Tiger Lily II. We spent one day on a walk to the nearest "ruins", which turned out to be quite enjoyable. Future pictures will show the remains of a very well constructed windmill, used to crush the sugar cane; as well as the walls of a sugar rendering plant and (we think) rum distillery. It appears, although with it all in French it is not certain, that wherever they made sugar they also fermented some of the juice and distilled it to make the French rum. Unlike the British rum, they did not ever use the molasses (waste product of sugar refining); making French rum a unique taste (not to everyone's liking).

The next day, yesterday, the four of us rented a car and drove about 40 % of the roads. We saw other windmills and still-working rum factories; one which made pot rum and one which used a distilling column (for those of you who know your booze). We also saw typical habitation, lots of sugar cane, and a few artisan shops. It was fun and interesting, but we ran out of things to see before we ran out of time.

One really interesting thing that happened while we were here, was an outrageous anchoring attempt by a French charterer. There were three of us cruisers in the middle of a vast anchorage, all about 140 feet apart, with Cat Tales behind the two other boats. A large French charter catamaran came in at 90 degrees to our lay and started putting his anchor down on my chain, in the middle of us, about 80 feet in front of us. No way to understand what he was thinking. If he/we got lucky, he might not catch my chain; but regardless, he would have hit us as soon as the wind straightened him out on his chain. All three anchored boats started yelling at him, and he moved 400 feet away and was fine. Still a puzzle; and always a puzzle how many European charterers can rent massive boats when they don't understand anything about anchoring, wind, physics, etc. We have so many of these stories.

Stay tuned for pictures and more narrative the next chance we get - although we can't say when and where that will be...

A Three Hour Cruise?

Yesterday, Dawn and I got up early in Jolly Harbour, Antigua, and started off for Guadeloupe. Some weather sites suggested 15-20 knots from the east to east-south-east. Another suggested that these might die to less than 15. What we got was something else.

Jolly Harbour, at Latitude 17 deg. 15 min., is 56 nautical miles from Deshaies, at Latitude 16 deg. 19 min. We were not actually heading to Deshaies, hoping to go as far east as Port Louis, kind of on the inside wings of the Guadeloupe butterfly. However, it became apparent, as we got into clean air that we were not easily going to make Port Louis, so we settled down for a run to Deshaies.

The wind at 800 hrs, after clearing the coast, was actually 26 to 30 knots, and we were glad the sails were well reefed. We had a bumpy couple of hours until it settled down to 22 knots for a couple more hours, then it started to climb again. As it climbed, it shifted to the south so far that we were soon 35-45 degrees off our course. Dawn said the waves grew as big as houses; but I suggest they all looked like the back of a strip-mall: tall and square. Cat Tales was often at a precarious angle, still with both hulls in the water. We had not seen any weather like this since we sailed to Bermuda in 2008. Two hours later, the wind died down to 20 knots, and settled back to an easterly direction; allowing us to slowly crab back up to Deshaies. In all, we were sailing for 8 hours, and were tired, but happy when we entered the harbour at Deshaies. We probably celebrated with an extra wine, but who wouldn't.

We talked to Denis of Tiger Lily on his morning SSB weather net, and he explained that we had sailed through a tropical wave or trough. Some weather sites show these and some do not. I'm going to work hard at finding these things before raising sail.

Anyway, we're both well, and nothing appears to be broken.

We intend to move on tomorrow, and once again, internet will likely be unavailable for a while, or at least quite intermittent.

Heading for Guadeloupe

It's 6:50 am on Saturday and we're heading out of Jolly Harbour, Antigua heading for Guadeloupe.

We don't know what kind of Internet we'll have there since we'll be sailing on the western side, which is new for us. Our intention is to visit Marie Gallant, St. Anne, St. Francois before heading to Isle de Saintes to pick up company early in March.

Will update when we can.

Cheers!

Dawn

We've been gone a week with no internet, so this is a "maxiblog". We wrote this together, please forgive the bits of repitition!

Last Thursday, February 2nd, we left Jolly Harbour, Antigua, and moved north the few miles to Deep Bay; traveling with another boat, Moody Blue, a 35' Moody, with Torontonians Alan and April aboard. The next morning, we followed Moody Blue over to Barbuda. It was a lovely sail to a lovely island.

Barbuda is one of the uplifted coral islands, and is literally two levels: mostly 10', with a small flat area of 125' called the Highlands. Like most of the Caribbean, it was originally deeply forested, but was deforested out of greed, and shows coral through thin sand in most places as a result of the topsoil being blown away by the hurricanes in the absence of significant vegetation.. It is best known for two features: an 11 mile beach which is the prettiest in the Caribbean and the largest and most biologically productive lagoon in the Caribbean.



How's this for a beach? It's called '11 mile beach'. We were here a few years ago with my sister, Lorna and her husband Brian. I'm sure they remember it well. During the full moon this week, it was spectacular.


A primary attraction, indeed the third thing that makes Barbuda famous, is the Frigate Bird Sanctuary. We elected to pay for a tour through the sanctuary, found in the northern part of the big lagoon.

Our group consisted of many of our old friends we keep meeting down here. Alan and April are from "Moody Blue" and Denis and Arlene are from "Tiger Lily II". George our guide and driver of the boat, knows the lagoon very well and in between stops flies along at an alarming speed compared to our 6 knots out on the ocean in our own sailboats.


George Jeffrey was our tour guide and water taxi driver. He was outstanding and we'd hire him again!


The frigate colony decorated the mangroves as if they were decorations on Christmas trees. It's time to mate, so we were able to see the males puffing out their big red gullets. Each female can lay only one egg per season and we were able to see lots of babies. These birds have been tracked for many miles north and south.










Because Terry is sick onboard the boat, Silk Pajamas, Kristin decided to come with us for a day out on the island with a bike rental. We were picked up by water taxi, our good friend George Jeffrey, otherwise known as 'Garden of Eden', and delivered into the town of Coderington.
The chairs on the deck of the bike rental spot were very unusual. You could really line up a few empties on the arms of these babies!


Here is Kristin, from the boat, Silk Pajamas, getting fitted for her bike for the day! Barbuda is one of the few islands flat enough to actually ride a bike!


Laurie and Kristin biking beside me. I had no accident while taking this photo!


We stopped along the west side of the island to see the beach and were a bit disappointed to see this tangle of litter that has floated in from the open ocean on the windward side.


We take a break from biking to do a little 'booty hunting'.


Nice to know that this toilet sea probably floated along for many miles before it was landed on the beach...


Framed again...


These caves were made up of one giant cave through which one could climb up through a sky light to the top of the highlands, 125 feet above. the highlands is an area of raised coral, flat on top that's about 2 square miles, with all its edges steep and cliff-like.


While up on top of this shelf, we had the most magnificent view!


This view demonstrates the topography and geology of this little island. Most of the coral below represents one flat uplift of the ocean floor by plate tectonics, and the cliff and flat "highland" is a further uplift. The cliff is an obvious break, where the highland came straight up. The whole of the island would have had great soil, made up of sediment from the many large rivers of northern South America. "Paradise Lost" as they say.


At the end of our biking day, we were waiting for George to take us to the other side of the lagoon. These lovely children came up to us complete with school uniforms, to give us flowers and hugs. After I took their picture, they wanted to see their photo. It's always amazing to me how these little ones take one look at the back of the camera and start hitting the buttons and enjoying the rest of the photos taken that day! Little wonder they learn so quickly!


After we arrived back at Cat Tales, we had just had our bath/swim in the ocean and were settling down to have a drink and watch the sunset. Well off from all the boats there was a dinghy I had seen earlier attempting to teach a young gal how to 'boogie board'. We could barely see them off in the distance, but after looking hard and long through the binoculars, we could see 2 people paddling and one person in the water. After a couple more minutes, Laurie hopped in our dinghy and headed out to see if they needed help. In this shot below, I have zoomed in as far as my camera will allow, and you can only see Laurie's boat and they are much further, so you can see how far they are out.


Laurie has gone a great distance to the left of the dinghy in trouble to pull a young lady out of the water. She had decided to swim from the dinghy to get back to the boat. I really don't think she could have made it with the current and distance.


Here is a close-up of Laurie hauling their dinghy back just at sunset! What lucky individuals they are to be still with us!

heading for Barbuda

Finally, the wind is down and we're pulling up anchor today heading for Deep Bay, Antigua and then on to Barbuda in the morning. There is likely very little Internet to be had while in Barbuda, but you never know! Some of the most remote places have a connection.

We'll catch up with the blog when we see our way to send through cyber space.

The last time we were in Barbuda, we had a short stay while my sister and hubby, Lorna and Brian were aboard. We enjoyed the snorkeling and the beach, but apparently we didn't see the bird sanctuary, which is a must do, and we didn't take a tour of the island. Laurie is hoping for a bike rental since it's one of the flattest islands.

Dawn