Terre-de-Haut to Deshaies

Catching you all up on our latest progress.

 

Before we left Marie Galante on Wednesday we managed to negotiate – In French I might add – with the local islanders to buy some fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, corn and mangos that they were selling off the back of a truck!

 

We had a great sail from St Louis in Marie Galante to the Saintes, a small group of islands off the south coast of Guadeloupe.

 

It was dead downwind and we had lots of weather fronts run through during the day. We had torrential rain with each squall and had a couple of 25 knot gusts for good measure.

 

Thankfully though, the last front passed just as we were approaching the Saintes and we could safely navigate our way in through the coral reefs.

 

We were absolutely blown away by the dramatic scenery here. The little town – Le Bourg – has a real Caribbean charm about the place and is definitely more up market compared to Marie Galante.

 

We arrived around 4pm and had time for a swim and a sundowner before launching the dinghy and heading ashore.

 

Mostly to balance our budget, we are mixing it up between eating on board with a few meals out. Because of the 4pm curfew that we experienced on mainland Guadeloupe, we decided to go ashore for dinner and found a magic pizza place which we washed down with some Ice cold Caribb beer!

 

What takes a bit of getting used to us that it’s dark at 6pm. Our latitude here in the tropics is just 16 degrees north (compared to Dublin at 53 degrees).  Essentially we have 12 hours of daylight. Also there is no dusk. Once the sun goes down it’s pitch black within 15 minutes!

 

We decided to slow things down  and take a rest day here on Thursday. We brought the boat around to Le Pain Sucre in the morning. Some of you French scholars might translate this as the “sugar loaf “ which reminded us of home.  We spent a couple of hours snorkelling and tried out our gopro for the first time so we’ll definitely share some of it when we figure it out.

 

We hired a couple of mopeds in the afternoon and had some great crack buzzing around the island.

 

Dinner was on board last tonight as we prepared for our passage to Deshaes in the north end of Guadeloupe. The hurricane season officially ended here on 30 November but boats cruising this area usually keep an eye out for any tropical disturbances that can impact the weather patterns.

 

Looking forward to getting an early start shortly after first light tomorrow morning.

 

Catch up with you all in Deshaies.

 

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