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...
