Fantastic sail from Antigua to Guadeloupe on Tuesday (28th May). Distance was about 40NM and the wind was almost directly on the beam blowing around 18 to 20kts gusting to 28kts. We cleared English Harbour, set a reefed main and staysail and made our course almost due south. We were doing an average of 7 to 8 kts with us making over 9 when the gusts came through. Sea was a bit lumpy with a combined wind and swell producing around a 2.0 to 2.5m sea so there was a bit of motion on board the boat. Those who weren’t on deck retired to sleep or watch TV below while those on deck had an exhilarating sail.
We seem to have been loosing and breaking stuff recently. Seems we left the electrical shore power cable on the dock when we departed St Maarten. This is the cable we need when we come into a marina to connect to shore power. Not sure what happened but it got left. Luckily there was a spare cable onboard but it is a bit shorter. In Antigua when we had the passarelle deployed we managed to put a crack in the stern section of the toe rail; Also in Antigua we seem to have lost the ensign which we fly at the stern - well lost or it went walkabout. Then on the sail over, the staysail furler malfunctioned due to corrosion in some fasteners. We had to drop the sail to come into anchor. We had only just got over the loss of the kitchen sink plug. Funny as it may seem it is a very important piece of equipment and a replacement was extremely hard to come by - (finally found in a plumbing shop in St Johns after combing other islands north of Antigua for it)
We made landfall off the North West tip of Guadeloupe and our first destination was just on the west coast at a place called Deshaies (pronounced Day-ay). This is a little town nestled at the bottom of dense green covered hills in a small bay. The land around the bay rises steeply and on one side it is cliffs. It is very Jurrasic Park’ish. It looks and feels very tropical and the weather adds to this as it is quite humid with fairly frequent showers. There is a small river emptying into the bay and when we arrived it must have just calmed down after some significant rainfall as the bay was all brown and silty and the smaller streams off the hillsides were still gushing. We heard later that one unfortunate yacht had left their dingy tied up at a dock just in the river mouth and the force of the water had sunk it whilst they were away sightseeing.
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| Deshaies |
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| Deshaies main street |
Guadeloupe is very different from Antigua. First it is French, second it is much bigger with a population 4 times that of Antigua and thirdly the terrain is very different. The island is in the shape of a butterfly with one wing very mountainous and the other fairly flat. We will be transiting down the high western side.
Scott and Nicole went to check in the first morning after our arrival. Customs and immigration here are pretty relaxed. They went into town and found an internet cafe called “Le Pelican”. There was a computer terminal which all the ship and passenger details were logged into, a four euro charge and we were cleared in. Excellent system and only slightly slower than Changi Airport. Then it was off for a quick cafe and pain au chocolate before returning to the boat with an armful of baguettes. The town is quite small, with a single main street, but it seems to have all the essentials - a patisserie, a few restaurants, a supermarket and some well stocked fruit and veg market type stalls.
Of course the first priority was school. We are just around the lesson 100 mark - yay only 60 more lessons to go. Not sure who will be more relieved when its all over - the kids or the parents. But when we finish we will probably have to roll straight into the next years course which has already been ordered and delivered.
The next day was awesome. There is a walk here along the river which the guidebook had pegged at around 3hrs round trip. We decided to start early at 0700 whilst it was still cool. We walked from the town a short way to the trailhead at the end of a concrete road and tried to follow a path up the riverside. The path however soon vanished and we had to scramble over the river rocks. Due to the recent flooding everything was extremely slippery and there was flash flood debris everywhere. We kept going and eventually seemed to be spending more time in the water than out. It was sometimes easier just to climb straight up the rapids. Everyone was muddy and soaked from the rainfall and the river but it was great fun and the kids loved it. After about 3.5hrs we ended up at an intermediate stop near a paved road. We carried on for another three quarters of an hour hiking up a muddy trail and then back into the river until we came to what we had been looking for - a cave. The river seems to just emerge from the cave which is more like a very narrow gorge. The gorge is blocked by a huge bolder behind which you can hear a waterfall.
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| The cave and waterfall |
With a bit of scrambling it was possible to get through a gap between the boulder and the gorge wall behind which is a small pool with this waterfall dropping from what looks like a rock chute about 20 or 30ft. It was a really amazing spot. The gorge walls rise vertically on all sides and are covered in brilliant green ferns and moss. At the top of the gorge the sides seem to almost touch and you can see trees precariously balanced on the edges and silhouetted in the sunlight. Their roots snake down the gorge walls looking for any tenuous hold they can find. The air is full of mist from the waterfall which swirls about in the void coating everything in water droplets. The noise is deafening even though its is not that big a waterfall. You could stand under the water chute and get pummelled by the water.
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| Getting ready to head back |
We hung around the waterfall for the best part of an hour and then trekked back to the road and then took the road back to town arriving over seven hours after having started. Everyone was tired, had sore legs and was relieved to be back but it had been a lot of fun. Calley especially did extremely well. It was a hard walk and she had new boots which seemed to do the trick.
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| Calley very happy with herself |
The next day we hauled our weary selves off to a very picturesque botanical garden here which is amazing but given that we have recently just left tropical Singapore was very similar to the gardens there.
We push on tomorrow a bit further down the coast.
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