Passage: Departure: 2/27 12:00 English Harbour, Antigua
Arrival: 2/27 22:30 Deshaies, Guadeloupe
Distance: 42nm
This is your Captain speaking, preparing to give you a debriefing on how I plan to make our travels thru this cosmic ocean a little more interesting for those of you tuning in. My wonderful 1st Mate/coCaptain has been figuring out ways for me to keep a detailed captains log on this here computer then be able to zap it all onto our journal page for the rest of the world. So in theory I'm going to make this as close to my actual log that I keep aboard minus the scribbling and eraser smudges. So hold on (to you drink) because here we go. After spending a whole week in English Horbour, Antigua and doing all the historical sightseeing that was within walking distance we were needing to reevaluate our plans. It always seems that time just slips by so fast and there is always so much to see that after a week in one place you wish you could see the entire island. But time won't allow that, nor money so instead of spending more time at other anchorage's on Antigua we agreed to move on in an effort to have more time at some of the other islands. When planing it is so difficult to know what lies ahead. The guide books help a lot for what the anchorage will be like, but after that they get into restaurants, car rentals, guided tours and all those wonderful things that we cannot afford. We like to explore on our own, snorkel, fish, and shop at the local markets. My experience has been the less is written about one place, the more we are likely to find things that we like. Our plans for our travels have also put us on somewhat of a time schedule. This is caused by a few major factors, 1- hurricane season and 2- best weather for passages. After our trip down and some of the more boisterous sailing that we've done, we are now becoming better at choosing good conditions for sailing. Forcing out into 20-30kts is now something we would rather not do, it is much better on our relationship and the well being of the boat to wait and plan when the wind will ease up a bit and make our passages a pleasure and not a teeth bashing experience. So we wait, and then we go, and oh what beautiful passages we have started to have. I will recap the one from the BVI's to Antigua at some other point and stick with the one at hand for now. Yesterday our plan for leaving Antigua was to clear customs around 09:00 (they supposedly open at 9), hoist the outboard aboard round 09:30, fuel and water up around 10:00 and be underway around 11:00 at the latest. Well with a line forming the customs officer finally arrived at a little after 09:30, everything else took longer (a wait at the fuel dock) and we finally cleared out of the harbor shortly after noon. 41nm to go at an average of 5kts makes the trip around 8hrs, already we are arriving in the dark- normally this would not be acceptable, but the anchorage and surrounding approach to Deshaies was the most open, straight forward approach we have faced in all our travels so far. It is simply a deep cove cut out of the western shore of Guadeloupe, so a night approach posed no real dangers. So as we hoisted sails out of English Harbour we were greeted with 3-4' seas and 5-10kts of E/SE winds, pretty much perfect (especially since the day before it was blowing 20kts with gusts up near 30kts). So as all the canvas went up we were making a slow 3kts when the wind was more around 5kts and would speed up to about 5kts when the wind increased to 10kts. About 15nm out the wind finally gained its momentum and filled into a steady 10kts and our boat speed never fell below 5kts, and as Jeannette remarked the seas actually subsided with the increase in wind. So it was a beautiful beam reach as we sailed by Montserrat and watched smoke billow form its volcano as the sun set behind it. Unbelievable! The sun set and I reeled in the fishing lines - no luck with the fish this time, I think the weather was too settled for them to be fooled, oh but next time . . . . The stars filled in above as we kept a sharp eye on the approaching Guadeloupe land mass, and I kept plotting our course on the paper charts. We have a GPS but I do not trust where they show the land as I have more than once seen our plotted position show up on what they have showing as land. I simply keep a record of the Lat & Long and plot this on real paper charts and use all the information to determine our course and heading- and more than anything we use our eye's to look ahead and compare what each of us sees and what's on the chart to our position. So as we made our approach into Deshaies around 22:00 everything seemed good. We took our approach slow as the lights of town always blind you and make seeing the other boats at anchor difficult to make out. Found a spot to drop the hook and settled in. Showers and cocktails for the crew made for a good sleep. Now here we sit this morning sipping coffee and surrounded by lush mountains and an unobstructed view towards Mexico over the Caribbean Sea. The roosters are crowing, a slight smell of smoke from fires ashore drift thru the air, and the Q flag is up. Now we are off to clear customs and hike up a river that empties right here into this bay. Caribbean exploration brought to you by all aboard Puff.