Sailing the Caribbees

February 1, 2014

Iles des Saintes, Guadaloupe

We did end up renting a Suzuki minivan that fit the 4 of us as well as all 4 Zani’s and spent a day driving up and down the incredibly steep hillsides of St. Barth’s. Though the roads are narrow and the hills steep, the condition of the roads are the finest I’ve seen anywhere in the Caribbean! We had a beautiful sun filled day of beach going starting at Saline beach where the wind was strong and the waves big and fun! After lunch at Grain de Sel at Saline we continued around the south shore and up around the north shore checking out the various options until returning to the south shore and the beach of Gouveneur just to the west of Saline – definitely the most beautiful spot on the island. The waves here were big and clean, sheltered more from the wind. The beach is a perfect strip of clean sand nestled dramatically between two cliff-lined headlands. We met a friendly young girl named Saline at Gouveneur beach who turned out to be the daughter of the couple who own a beautiful wooden yawl named Lone Fox. A few summers ago I sailed against Lone Fox during the summer NYYC cruise races up in Maine while on Winnie of Bourne. Lone Fox is based out of St. Barth’s and Saline, originally born in London, has spent the last 7 of her 10 years growing up here. She approached Mege and Orly in the water and started chatting them up. Later we met her mother, Susanna, and learned that there are quite a lot of children from literally all over the world growing up here. Saline told us there are about 340 kids in her school alone (1st – 5th grade). Her accent is a bit muddled, as she put it, sounding a mix of British and French, while speaking English. Unfortunately, since we were a couple days away from leaving, we didn’t have time to get Orly and Saline together for some play time, but we got a good window into what growing up in St. Barth’s is like for a kid.
Asa and Wake (Zani) spent the entire day buried deep in the waves by the surf break.
After a day of quiet recovery and schoolwork back in Columbier, we made ready to work our way east either to Antigua or Guadaloupe via St. Kitts. The long term forecast didn’t sound good for moving to windward. This winter has been unusually windy with wind speeds in the 20-25 knot range much of the time as opposed to the more moderate norm of 15-20 knots. I feel I made a big mistake in starting our trip in the Virgin Islands instead of delivering the boat to Antigua as we always did when Mege and I were running boats down here. We’ve spent the last 2 ½ months laboriously working our way to windward. We’ve had a great time, but I know our trip would have been much different had we started from Antigua. The Zani’s on Fabuloso also planned on moving east to Antigua during the same slim window of NE breeze. We left Thursday morning with the intention to sail to St. Kitts then continue on early Friday morning either for Antigua or the north of Guadaloupe, but as we approached St. Kitts, I analyzed our options and revisited the wind forecast and decided that we would all be much better off to keep sailing through the night on the same favorable close reach angle to Iles des Saintes just south of Guadaloupe. Thankfully we had a very uneventful night of close reach sailing past Nevis, Montserratt, ending in the large shadow of Guadaloupe, and approached the Saintes with the rising sun.
So, here we are in the beautiful and very picaresque Iles des Saintes! It’s been many years (15?) since we’ve been here and the sleepy little town I remembered wandering at daybreak so long ago looking for the hidden boulangerie for our morning’s supply of baguettes has blossomed into a bustling, but still very quaint little village. Many more colorful shops than I remembered and the streets filled during the daytime with mostly French or French Canadian tourists who arrive by the boatload from Guadeloupe. The streets are super narrow and wind up the hillside stacked with fruit tree and banana plant shaded abodes mixed in with the shops and restaurants along the waterfront. Feels very south of France meets Caribbean! One difference we’ve found is that unlike in St. Barth’s and St. Martin where most shop and restaurant owners spoke both French and English, here, we have to rely much more on our limited French.

While in town yesterday morning we met another cruising family who sailed from Toronto on their Hanse 44, HAPPY CHAOS. The Zani’s have spent time with them and another Canadian family who are close friends with the HAPPY CHAOS crew and are also cruising on their own Hanse called UNKNOWN ISLAND. Chances are we’ll get together for some playtime soon. The latest word from the Zani’s is that they arrived yesterday in Deshaies, Guadaloupe after a 15-hour sail from St. Barth’s. We should see them tomorrow or the next day.

We plan on spending a few days here before moving the 20 miles south to Dominica where we are looking forward to spending a couple of weeks!

Hopefully you are all looking at the pictures I’ve posted and making some connections with some shots to my narrative. Unfortunately, the application to load photos on the blogsite is a bit frustrating in that it doesn’t let me load more than 20 photos at a time and it seems to scramble the photos so that they are not chronologic as I intended. I hope to be able to edit the photo albums and learn how to insert some text descriptions along with the photos. I recently installed a new wifi booster onboard the boat and if we are anchored near enough a good wifi signal, I should have some time to figure it all out. In the meantime, I’ll endeavor to keep you up to date on our adventures!

Much love to all!
Jeff, Mege, Orly and Asa