Sometimes it is difficult to recall what the highlights are of an event, in our case the highlights of our retirement cruise with Island Girl. But we have no trouble to indicate our highlights. The first one was in the beginning of our trip on the east coast of the Dominican Republic when a Humpback Whale jumped 5 times around Island Girl and after that started slapping its flux on the water while we and the whale continued our journey. On Grand Anse in Terre-de-Haut on The Saintes we saw a Leatherback turtle laying her eggs and after she covered the eggs returned to the sea. The turtle was apparently not disturbed at all by all the spectators around her. However, 5 gendarmes and one wild life inspector made sure no one came too close to the animal. It was the most impressive sight I have ever seen and I was so excited when the turtle made it back to the ocean and swam away through the breaking seas not to return to land for at least 2 to 4 years.

If you look at the pictures or the video of the turtle you see that the beach is covered with sea grass. When we came close to St. Croix on our trip from Bonaire we suddenly saw a lot of sea grass in the sea and when we came in the bay with the harbor of Christiansted there was sea grass everywhere. We saw it again on our way to St. Maarten and any other crossings we made. All the windward beaches are covered with the sea grass that came to shore and made these beaches very unattractive. On The Saintes that is very dependent on day tourism coming over from Guadeloupe with the ferries the beaches are cleaned every day and the sea grass raked into piles that are getting taller and taller. Unfortunately the sea grass in these big piles starts rotting causing a bad smell. Of course the beaches that are not protected by reefs and are too dangerous for swimming and other watersports are not cleaned. It will take a long time before all the sea grass is gone on the beaches as well as at sea.

We stayed for over 3 weeks in Deshaies in Guadeloupe having a great time and we could have stayed a little longer. Our original plan was to leave directly after Easter, but we had found our favorite French Restaurant in Deshaies and we decided to celebrate our 35th Anniversary with a lunch at this restaurant. What a great decision that was, the lunch was super and we had a wonderful time. We spent our time in Guadeloupe doing our favorite things like visiting great places, doing fun things like diving, snorkeling, swimming or just being on the beach. I like to make easy hikes and although Dorothy is not a great fan of this activity she goes along and most of the time admits that it was fun to do. Besides renting a car we drove the bus quite a few times and although it was very confusing to find the correct bus and the departure times we made many bus trips especially to the largest city in Guadeloupe: Point-a-Pitre. This trip takes most of the time an hour to an hour and a half and it follows the west, north/west coastline with beautiful views over the sea and the mountains on the east side of the island of Basse-Terre. Point-a-Pitre is a wonderful historic town with many narrow streets with nice stores and restaurants and it is fun just to walk around. Although Dorothy and I are not great shopping fans we visited one day one of the largest malls in the Caribbean called “Destreland” and it is big! The anchor store is the supermarket from “Carrefour” and it has any food item you want to buy. The fact that the French Islands are part of France makes them more prosperous than the other islands in the Caribbean with a large middle class and that shows.

Of course we also needed to spend time on boat maintenance. Since our arrival in St. Croix we have had an exceptional sea growth on the bottom of Island Girl. Last year in Trinidad we took the boat out of the water and had the bottom painted which most of the time reduces the marine growth for at least 2 years. But since our arrival in St. Croix I have to clean the bottom every two weeks to keep the marine growth in check. Fortunately my son Robert gave me a Brownie Third Lung or also called Hookah System. This system is a compressor with hoses and regulators and allows you to dive up to 60 ft. deep. Since I never have to go deeper than 6 ft. cleaning the bottom of the boat I can stay underwater longer to clean one side in one dive. But together with the propeller and bow thruster it takes me a total of about 5 hours to get the job done.

On the Monday after our anniversary celebration we left Deshaies for The Saintes an island group just south of Guadeloupe. In total it is about a 35 miles trip mostly along the west coast of Guadeloupe. This makes this sail complicated since the wind along this coast line changes by the minute not only in strength but also in direction. Some people just give up using the sail and just motor sail until the south point of Basse-Terre. The forecast predicted nice easterly wind and we started with a small reef in the main sail and full genoa. But within 15 minutes we had 33 kn. wind and the remainder of the trip especially on the south side of Basse-Terre and the crossing to Les Saintes the wind did not lessen and the waves became larger and larger and one ran into the dodger and over the bimini. We worked hard to control the boat and reduced sails but Island Girl loved it and made 8.5 kn. speed which is 1 kn. over the theoretical hull speed of the boat.

We love The Saintes with nice mooring buoys close to town and the most beautiful views from one island to the other. The main island Terre-de-Haut has 7 beaches all except “Grand Anse” in relatively small secluded bays. From the dinghy dock it is a nice stiff walk to “The Bay Pompierre” that we consider the most beautiful one. All the others are a little further and due to the hilly terrain they are mostly an hour walk. So that is the reason most day tourists rent a scooter for about $35.00 a day and we did too. During our scooter ride we visited one of our favorite spots: Fort Napoleon. We mainly do this because of the very nice gardens around the fort and de magnificent views. We made a nice hike on “Ilet a Cabrit” to the remnants of “Fort Josephine”. Again not to see the fort but the views (see our pictures). We never visited the largest island of The Saintes called “Terre-de-Bas”. This is the only island in the east Caribbean that has large windmills for the production of electricity. So this time we took the ferry to visit this island and we had a great time. Unfortunately the largest beach again called “Grand Anse” is completely covered with sea grass, but the restaurant is great. We had a very delicious inexpensive lunch consisting of locally caught grilled fish. The hill in the center of the island “Morne Abymes” is close to 1000 ft. high and most of the roads although very narrow and steep are in good condition. However, the road through the center of the island has never been completely restored after the earthquake of 2004. We took a tour and the driver who is also the owner of the ferry took us with his very expensive Mercedes van to all the most beautiful locations with spectacular views and all the small bays and beaches for only $11.00 per person.

But it is time to move on and the next island we will visit is Dominica and we will report about our visit to this island in our next blog.