Ile des Saintes

Have just said goodbye to Pete and Claire and waved them off on the ferry going back to Guadeloupe.  They have been with us for the last 7 or 8 weeks so the boat will seem pretty quiet without them.  We must say they were fantastic guests and apart from being great company contributed a lot to the general work on the boat which was very much appreciated.  The kids also had a great time with them.

Waiting for a Dingy

So for the family it is now onward on our own for the next couple of weeks.  It is always strange to start off again just the four of us after we have had company but we quickly fall into the day to day routines again.  We have a rendezvous with Scott’s brother and family in a couple of weeks in St Lucia so we will slowly make our way south.

For the last few days we have stayed moored off Le Bourg which is the main town on Iles de Saintes.  It is very peaceful and relaxing here.  There are three or four islands forming a fairly sheltered bay.  All the islands have high hills.  We arrived and moored up during a rain shower which drenched everyone except Scott and since then the weather has been showery although the last couple of days have been beautiful and today is just superb.  The water is clear as bell, the sky is completely blue apart from a few white puffy clouds.  There are huge black frigate birds circling overhead.  The hillsides are full of colour being covered in red “flamboyant” trees and purple wisteria.

Le Bourg - Ile des Saintes

This is a very French enclave.  The islands were never used for agriculture and so slaves were never brought onto the islands.  Therefore the local population does not have such an African heritage.  Instead the island was settled by fishermen from Brittany and the local population reflects this.  

The main town is small but big enough to be interesting.  There are quite a few restaurants and lots of shops selling beautiful summer clothes.  There is a Carrefour and most importantly two boulangeries.  There is a main dock which is used for the daily ferries running back and forth to Guadeloupe and some other small businesses dotted around the main harbour and primarily catering to the tourists.  Apart from tourism its difficult to see how the island survives.  There are a lot of open fishing boats so obviously there is some revenue from fish and lobster but that appears to be all.  There are quite a lot of tourists here though - each day the ferries arrive and disgorge a horde of visitors who wander over the island or go diving which is supposed to be superb.

The Waterfront

The town is big enough to wander around a few times and see new things.  It has a village feel and especially today (Saturday) it seems really busy.  All the shops are open and there are locals wandering the streets and chatting.  There is a small park with lots of shade trees, some of which are bottle brushes like we have in Australia.  In the park the locals sit and chat on the park benches.  Its a really relaxed setting.  

Local Park

When we pulled into the bay there was another boat which looked very similar to Dulcinea but quite a bit bigger at around 73ft.  It was the same colour, same rig and same basic look.  There were a couple onboard taking care of it called Frank and Christina who we got to know and so we each visited each other’s boat.  Their boat was called Pulsar 2 but originally it was owned by the owner of Maersk and called Klem VII.  It is a Danish X-Boats build. It always interesting to have a look at other boats and compare them to Dulcinea.  I guess its something to do with combating any buyers remorse!  Some of the time you get ideas on how to implement small improvements.  Pulsar 2 is a big boat but the layout down below was very strange - with all the volume of a bigger boat it still seemed quite enclosed.  And they had the strangest mainsheet arrangement ever - the mainsheet is deadended on the aft deck under the boom, it then travels up to a sheave in the boom, along the inside of the boom to the mast, down the mast below decks into the engine room where there is a single drum winch which controls the pay in / pay out obviously from a switch at the deck.  Frank said it worked pretty well but strange never the less.

We took a day out of school to have a look around the island.  We hired three scooters and just went exploring.  There is an old Napoleonic fort here which has a small museum and was very interesting.  There were a few displays showing details of a huge naval engagement which occurred  between the British and the French fleets around Napoleon’s time just off the Saintes.  Unfortunately most of the text was in French but we got the gist of it.  We found a fantastic restaurant for lunch on Marigot Bay and had one of those meals you only seem to be able to get in France.  They had these wooden painted place mats with the island on them.  Pete had asked about being able to buy one as a souvenir but had not got much of a response.  On the way out though one of the waiters came running after us and handed him a place mat.  That is typical of the local people here - very kind and friendly. 

Fort Napoleon Bell

The rest of the day we enjoyed zooming around the narrow local roads and visiting a number of the beaches on the island.

Quality control on local fish trap manufacturing

Originally Pete and Claire had planned to leave us on the Monday but the weather forced a change.  We are slowly beginning to understand the summer weather patterns here in the Caribbean.  Generally the wind blows east at 15 to 20kts but there are these tropical waves which are areas of low pressure and which originate over by Africa.  These move west with the trades and bring thunderstorms and squalls for couple of days.  When conditions are right it is these tropical waves which start circulating to form hurricanes.  The next tropical wave is forecast on Sunday and so we wanted to move onto Dominica before it hit the Saintes which meant bringing our departure forward a couple of days.  Luckily it was not a major for our guests as the ferry connections here are no problem.

The Scooter Gang

So in a few hours we will push on to the island of Dominica which lies about 20NM SSE of the Saintes.  The weather at the moment is pretty nice and it should be a resaonable sail.