Leg 20 – Caribbean – Guadeloupe

And the French flag was back flying on starboard side!

Marie Galante

We remained on Marie Galante three days, two anchored in Baie de Saint Louis and one in Anse Canot. Marie Galante is known mostly for its sumptuous beaches. And it is true, the beach of Anse Canot was an absolute wonder even though after a couple of months sailing through the Caribbeans, we came already accross several paradise beaches. But on Marie Galante, sadly, as soon as we looked beyond the beautiful beach we found quite a lot of trash laying around. From classic plastic bottles, glass bottles or metallic cans to complete fridges. That was really unexpected considering the good reputation of the island.

Îles des Saintes

We left Marie Galante to Terre-de-haut, one of the islands of Îles des Saintes archipelago, on February 10. This archipelago is located only 20Nm from Marie Galante. Despite a few wind shifts and a short period with no wind at all we had a smooth and easy sailing. This time, luck did not bring us any fish, instead it gave us sun above our heads all the way to Terre-de-haut when everywhere else was just nasty dark clouds. Eventually these dark clouds reached us later in the night after our arrival in Terre-de-haut. They brought with them a lot of rain, wind and waves.

It was quite a long time since we had that much rain and we found that rain water was leaking again from the feet of the top rail to the rear compartment. We had sealed the feet when we were in Lanzarote, using sikaflex 591, but that sikaflex doesn’t stick well to teak. It had been keeping the rear compartment more or less tight for some time but after a while the sikaflex stopped sticking to the teak, opening larger gaps for water to enter. It was basically time to redo the sealing. This time we used sikaflex 290, a product used to seal teak deck. The best would have been to detach the top rail and place the sealant under the feet but it is not an easy task with the boat in the water with waves and wind and it is also heavy, and so was not done.

Things calmed down the afternoon next day so we could get onshore with a 10 minutes dinghy ride from our anchorage to the dinghy dock.

We found in Terre-de-haut a truly marvelous and relaxing place. The village, called simply “Le bourg”, is composed of low houses built aside narrow streets along the main and well protected bay called Anse du bourg. A place where tourists hire electric golf cars or electric scooters to circulate on an island where most of the attractions, bar, restaurants, supermarkets, hotels and guest houses and beaches are at a walking distance from each other was a bit strange though. Instead we took the time to hike.

Terre-de-haut is overlooked by an old fortress, Fort Napoleon, built by the French to defend the island against (drum roll… ) the British. Now converted as a museum dedicated to the history of Les Saintes we took a short hike to visit it and enjoy the breathtaking view over Anse du Bourg. For this short walk, Maria took out her best outfit, a top in crochet she started working on when we were sailing along the coast of Portugal. She worked on it from time to time along our way until she completed it as we were on anchor in Terre-de-haut.

However, Fort Napoleon is not the highest top of Les Saintes, rather it is “Le Chameau” with its 309 meters that dominates Les Saintes. That location offers beautiful panoramic views over the entire archipelago. The British also thought it was a good spot and they used it in one of their several assaults against the island to bomb the French positions lower down and gain temporary control over the archipelago.

Looking toward east: Le bourg and Anse du Bourg

Looking toward south: Grand îlet on the left, Lacoche on the right and Dominica far away in background.

Looking toward west: Terre-de-bas

Looking toward north: the small bay of Pain de sucre with Basse Terre in background.

Pain de Sucre is a volcanic hill that protects a small bay that is known for its clear water and corals (or what is left of them unfortunately) … and for being quite crowded with tourists too. Nevertheless, we did some wonderful snorkling there.

After a wonderful stay in Îles des Saintes, we decided to say goodbye to the iguanas (they are more or less everywhere, even though they are not easy to spot because they have good camouflage in the trees) and make route towards Deshaies.

Deshaies

We left the beautiful archipelago of Les Saintes towards Deshaies in the north of Guadeloupe on February 15. We had a smooth sailing but on the way up along the coast of Basse Terre, about one hour and a half after we passed by the lighthouse of Vieux Fort, south west tip of Guadeloupe, we heard on VHF channel 16 that a sailboat with three people onboard capsized and ended up upside down in front of the lighthouse we had passed earlier. Several boats that were in proximity were already providing assistance to rescue the sailors. We were very anxious when listening to the VHF communications as the rescue was going on and relieved when we heard that everyone was safe.

We reached Deshaies in the afternoon and gathered with our friends sailing S/Y Inga and S/Y Alba for an evening drink.

We found the bay of Deshaies to be very well protected. The town is small but it has nice restaurants and bars as well as small shops that propose activities such as snorkling, diving, whale watching… well, we did not sign up to any of these activities. Instead we came to know that a wild female dolphin had the habit to visit the bay from time to time during the day. We didn’t really know the reason for her doing that but she came in the bay while we were on anchor there. We were a bit hesitating to approach her but after some time we jumped in the water with her. There was a guy apparently very comfortable playing with her and she looked like she enjoyed herself a lot imitating what that guy was doing and playing with a small piece of sargasso. She was making a lot of sounds as she was swimming. That was an absolute magical, unexpected and unforgettable experience. There were also many turtles swimming in the bay and these are always fabulous to watch !

After such beautiful encounter, and an evening with guitar and songs onboard S/Y Inga with our friends, we lifted the anchor on February 18 to sail north towards Antigua that we reached after a 8 hours on close reach.