Sailing the Riviere Salee and the Grande Cul-de-Sac Marin to go to Antigua from Guadeloupe was both an adventure and an intense time. We left our mooring ball at Point-a-Pitre's harbor at 4:30 AM and motored up to the entrance of the bridge, retracing our course from the day before. We had taken Kikuyu up to the bridge the afternoon before to make sure that all the buoys that our chart showed were in place. This was a good thing to do because we found that the last 3 buoys before the bridge had been changed. As we approached the bridge from the harbor, there are now a Red buoy on the right of the channel, a Green on the left and fairly close to land and the last Red just before the bridge on the far right of the channel. We also found that we had to keep these buoys very close to the boat or we would go aground.

We arrived at the bridge's entrance at 4:45AM and waited, hoping that the guys in charge of opening the bridge would make it. Since it was Carnival time most businesses had been closed through the day before. At 5 AM the bridge was still closed but we did notice that a light had gone on under it. As we waited anxiously, we saw a traffic bar lowering on the road atop the bridge and soon after the bridge started opening slowly. We were the only boat waiting and so we figured that as soon as the bridge opened we would go through. But the bridge had two parts - one for the incoming and another for outgoing traffic- and only one of the parts was going up. Finally, when it was all up, we saw the other part of the bridge opening and making an inverted V pattern with the section that was already opened. We started motoring quickly toward it when we heard a lot of screams. Two guys on the bridge's cabin where screaming at us in French! Maria, who was at the bow, screamed back and asked them if they could repeat in English. But they kept screaming in French. Fortunately, we understood the word "ar�te" which means "stop" and at that point realized that there was another sailboat coming from the other side which was to the left and blocked from our view originally. They had the right of way. Kim put Kikuyu in reverse and the boat backed out beautifully which was a relief because when going so slowly backing up can veer the boat in the wrong direction and we did not have much space. Once the other sail boat came through we passed under the bridge to follow a series of buoys placed closed to each other - right, left, right. We could see the mangrove trees hugging the river's edge, their leaves shinning an opaque white color. We also started feeling gigantic mosquito bites and quickly sprayed repellent on ourselves and Daniel, who was sleeping below.

The night was very dark and following the lighted buoys closely was important. We needed to get to the second bridge which was to open at 5:20AM sharp and we were running out of time. But the depths were very low, under 7 feet, and at one point we got off just a bit off the channel and registered 6.7 feet on our depth sounder - just 4 inches deeper than our keels' bottom! This was not supposed to be the lowest part of the river which we were to encounter after the second bridge. Passing the second bridge was easier - only one bridge and ample space to go under. But we were concerned that if we had seen such low depths before we would hit ground after the second bridge. Thankfully, the depths after the second bridge were a bit over 7 feet and so we motored the 3 mile river following each lighted buoy religiously.

After exiting the river, we were in the Grande Cul-de-Sac Marin which is a very shallow area surrounded by reefs with a very deep (100-300 feet) river bed which we were to navigate, again following the lighted buoys. To the left of the river bed was Ilet a Fajou a small island with just vegetation and to right was just a vast reef area. This was also tricky to navigate as we encountered a fishing boat and a couple of islands we had to pass by very closely - one was very small (looked like 10-feet in diameter) and rather cute as it was full of trees. It was very odd to navigate so close to it. Watching the sunrise after 6AM was a relief because we could now see and we knew that soon we will be in open ocean waters and headed for Antigua.

Unfortunately or fortunately (depending one's adventure level) the excitement did not stop after leaving the Grande Cul-de-Sac Marin. The weather forecast had called for winds under 20 knots and waves under 10 feet. What we found was winds in the mid twenties that did not let up and waves often over 10 feet and even though our sailing angle to the wind was pretty good (60 degrees) it was a rough ride as the waves would wash over our entire boat, one large one would come every 10 or so seconds and bang us at the beam and the port (left) side of the boat was under water the entire time. Both our main and jib sails were reefed but nonetheless we sailed at 7-8.5 knots the entire time, arriving to Antigua's Falmouth Harbor at noon.