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.
