05/24/2009

Saturday morning we cleared out of Guadeloupe, refueled, and headed for Iles des Saintes (The Saintes), a small group of islands just below the southwest tip of Guadeloupe. We made it to Grand Ilet early that afternoon and spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday with the Byatt family on L'Aventura. We also met other friends of theirs, a French Canadian couple, last name Tremblay, wife's name Michelle. Michelle Tremblay is my maiden name!!! They are from Quebec (as was my father), where Tremblay is like Smith or Jones in the U.S.

Friday night at dinner James and I had a long talk about this cruising life. The wind and water out here get tougher and tougher for me to handle the farther down we go, and even these "short hops" have been miserable. Fortunately, I have not had to deal with seasickness, but I cannot DO anything while the boat is moving, definitely a major problem on a passage requiring more than one day. All the anchorages are "rolly," which means even when we are "sitting still" we are constantly rolling from side to side. I'm tired of never being able to stand up without holding onto something (except when tied up in a marina), constantly battling refrigeration, generator, HEAT, and a whole list of other issues. To make a long story short, James has agreed to give up this life and return to Florida. For now, we plan to take Pegasus back to St. Maarten and secure her for the hurricane season, while we fly back to Florida. James will fly back and forth to check up on everything periodically, and we'll probably return to St. Maarten in November to bring her back. That's as far as the plans go so far. Monday morning we leave Grand Ilet for the return to St. Maarten.

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05/22/2009, Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe

We made it to Pointe-a-Pitre just after 5pm and entered the Marina Bas du Fort. After we got settled into a slip, we learned that the power pole we were looking at did not work, and our power cord was not long enough to reach all the way to the next available pole. We also learned that, despite their add in the cruising guide, they did not have internet access available in the marina. We would have to go to a nearby restaurant to get that. Since it was just about dark, we did not want to move the boat to another slip that night.

We went to dinner, brought in email, and finally heard from the L'Aventura folks, who were anchored at a small island about twenty-some miles southwest of us. We decided we would leave Saturday morning to join them since they would be heading south on Monday.

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05/22/2009

We headed south very early Friday morning to get down to Basse Terre, Guadeloupe's capital and second largest city. We intended to clear customs, get into the marina there, and maybe rent a car and do some island touring for a couple days. We ended up having to anchor outside what was left of the marina, where we found a backhoe working on the jetty and a very small channel leading inside. James took the dinghy in to check it out and clear customs. When he returned, he said they could get us in there, but some of the docks were falling apart, the place was filthy, and it would not be a nice place to stay. It didn't take long to decide to move on to the largest city and commercial shipping area in the middle of the southern coast, at the center of the "butterfly."

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