Sailing north to Guadeloupe

We left Bequia on February 23rd and sailed north for 70 miles to Rodney Bay, St Lucia. On the way, we passed the Pitons at sunset, quite spectacular from a couple of miles offshore, and a very different view to when we were anchored below them. We tried to anchor in Rodney Bay that night, but after two attempts left us with our anchor dragging, we decided to go into the marina. The moonlight was resonably bright and we found a spot easily. We spent two days in Rodney Bay before heading north again. With light winds and a reasonably flat sea, we wanted to make the most of the break in the NE tradewinds to make good progress north while we could. We passed Diamond Rock at the southern end of Martinique. This large outcrop had been completely obscured in a squall when we had been going south. We anchored in Saint Pierre in the north of Martinique that night, visiting the volcano museum and the ruins of the theatre. Saint Pierre was the capital of Martinique and was know as the 'Paris of the Caribbean' until it was completely devastated by the eruption of Mout Pele in 1929, killing 29,000 people. We had a great view of Mout Pele on our approach to Saint Pierre.

The next morning, we sailed on to Prince Rupert Bay in Dominica - another long day. Once again, we anchored off the Coconut Beach Hotel in the south of the bay avoiding the worst of the boat vendors, but we were still approached by boats with large outboard engines 4 miles away, wanting to sign us up for an Indian River tour. While we were anchoring, we were also approached by a further two boats.

The following day we sailed on to Les Saintes. The anchorage was much quieter that it had been at New Year and we were able to find a spot a short dinghy ride from the shore. As the afternoon went on, we found ourselves surrounded by French boats that all knew each other. One boat had a little terrier that launched itself into the sea and swam between boats to visit its friends. Their attempts to get this dog out of the water and back to its correct vessel were quite entertaining. One guy got his painter stuck in his dinghy propellor, resulting in a drifting dinghy, nowhere near the dog. Robin helped him get the engine untangled and started. The dog, meantime, was now on another boat, barking its head off at these displays of seamanship.

Just as we were about to go ashore for dinner, we saw Peter and Irene from 'Catspaw'. They joined us for a drink and then we went and had dinner. We had met Peter in Tenerife when he was crewing for 'Kalypso', one of the Blue Water Rally fleet. We were abruptly awakened at 0230 with a loud bang. We rushed up on deck to find that our French neighbours had dragged their anchor and were about to do serious damage to our topsides. Luckily, we didn't sustain any damage. We must have been woken by their sugar scoop against our anchor chain.We held them off while trying to wake them. It took a good five minutes to persuade them that they were in a completely different spot to earlier in the evening. By the time they accepted that they would have to re-anchor, they had dragged another half boatlength and would have done a lot of damage had we not lots of fenders in place. The following morning, we slept in to make up for our early morning alarm call, and then left for Point a Pitre on Guadeloupe. Sailing into 20 knots of headwinds and a heavy swell made the 24 miles slow going, but we speeded up once we were in the lee of Grand Terre.

We got a local bus into the town of Point a Pitre, looked at the Saturday morning markets. The flower market in particular was an incredible mass of exotic blooms and vibrant colour. Sadly we don't have enough space for vases of tall flowers. The vendor, abviously thought be were on a cruise ship rather than our little shoebox, and offered to have them delivered to the quay. The other markets were full of herbs and spices, local crafts, fruit, vegetables and fish.We visted the church of St Peter and St Pual, badly damage by hurricane Lenny, but still impressive. Outside the church, we found a big dog that we had seen running around the marina that morning. He was quite striking in a flea-bitten way, with one ear up and one down, and huge back feet with tuffs of brown fur sticking out each claw. He would not fit on the boat either, otherwise we might have found ourselves a pet! The rest of Point a Pitre is a mixture of rotting old buildings and run down modern concrete monstrosities. The one dissapointing thing about Guadeloupe is the amount of graffitti. Despite the squallor of many of the poorer islands, the attempts to improve Guadeloupe have been ruined. St Lucia and St Vincent may have persistant boat vendors, but an attempt to make some entreprise has to better than mindless vandalism.

We hired a car for a day and toured the island, visiting the famous 'Chutes de Carbets' a series of three spectacular waterfalls on the east side of Mount Soufrierre. We walked to the second of the three falls, a thirty minute walk through tropical rainforest and accross a rope bridge to the 270 foot falls. The water is an incredible 70 degrees, slightly unusual for a mountain stream. The volcano is dormant, but the water near the summit is just below boiling point. We visited the Coffee museum at View Habitants, and discovered that the French Antilles had had a thriving coffee industry until a combination of hurricanes and cheaper production in Brasil had indicated a switch to sugar cane plantations. They also had some interesting statistics about coffee consumption. Aparently Germans, per capita, drink slightly more beer than coffee. The statistics state 156 litres of beer per person per year compared with 146 litres of coffee.

We drove along the 'Route de la Traverse', right across the centre of Basse Terre, through the rainforest. Most of the central mountains are national park, with good hiking paths and picnic tables provided by mountain streams. We stopped at a small conservation zoo famous for saving the local racoon population. The racoons were all asleep on their branches and were thouroughly unimpressed by our visit, but we also saw a number of other native mammals and reptiles including iguanas. In the afternoon, we drove round the other wing of the butterfly, the much flatter Grand Terre. The countryside is dotted with old towers from the sugar cane industry.

We had planned to spent only two nights in Point a Pitre, but we ended up staying there for a further three nights due to a 'tropical wave' crossing the Atlantic Ocean. According to David Jones (Caribbean weather forecaster), this phenomenon is unheard of this early in the year. Thankfully it was not upgraded to a named tropic storm, for which we are uninsured! It did however produce gale force winds and pushed an 8 meter swell ahead of it. We sat it out in reasonable comfort in Point A Pitre marina, sampling a bit more french cuisine. We were supposed to meet up with Terry and Pam from 'Tudor Rose', but they were stuck in Deshaies for the same reason as we were still in Point a Pitre. They hired a car and toured the island. They came round for a drink with their friends Malcolm and Sheila and we all had a great meal in one of the marina restaurants. We sailed round to Deshaies, on March 7th, after the swell had died down, and saw Terry and Pam again. We had dinner early as we needed an early night to be fit for our 0300 start the following morning, but still managed to celebrate Robin's birthday.