Now we are anchored in the tourist destination of Terre des Hautes. The main town, Bourg des Saintes, is built right to the beach in the bright blue bay, the buildings are a mixture of wooden and concrete cottage style architecture with bright red tin roofs. Goats and chickens share the streets with the scooter riding French locals. Paul and Lizzie from Amaranth are here also, we drank sparkling wine and pina coladas over Lizzie’s Moroccan Chicken on board Amaranth. We had a tough walk to the tower lookout the following morning. Behind us a tall ship in anchored and the bastion forts of the late 1600’s watch over the busy idyllic bay.

The next day Nick and I sailed to Pidgeon Island, a little islet 500 m off Guadaloupes west coast – proportedly one of Jacques Cousteau’s favourite dive sites and now a Park Natural that bears his name. W picked up a mooring and clambered into our dive gear keen to see the result of the long term fishing and anchoring prohibition. A profound number of friendly fish were right under the keel in contrast to the desert like point we dived at Deshays. Our free diving is getting better all the time, 20 meters down we glided up to big snapper, bright reef fish and delicate soft corals. Nick nearly spat his snorkel when he came across a life size torso of Jacques giving the OK sign. The dive was great but I think we both preferred the dive we had the next day half way over to the Saints islands. In the middle of the deep passage rises a sharp spine of volcanic rock to 45 feet. It’sonly about 100 metres long but its flanks fall steeply to 400 feet depth. The visibility made objects at 100 feet look navy blue but still easily discernable. We didn’t see any big pelagic’s though, just a few rainbow runners and horse-eyed jacks.

It just happened that various towns around the island were celebrating Carnival. The temptation of home made coconut icecream took us to Lamenton where various street traders were selling it as well as cakes, crepes, peanuts, popcorn etc. Despite the continuing tropical showers, most the town had turned out to line the streets for the parade. Whilst waiting for it to start Lizzie and I chatted with Lola, a young Creole lady who happily told us about local dishes, education, the carnival and her life. The Carnival consisted of a procession of screeching dancing girls and women, men drumming out rhythms on plastic 205 litre drums and banner carriers bursting their lungs on conch shells. During the drive home across the top of the mountains on Route de la Traversee there are French rural vistas and tall rainforest and rocky rivers.

Paul and Lizzie invited us to join them for a day exploring by hire car. We packed a picnic lunch (Baggett and salad) and drove around Basse Terre, the western wing of the imaginary butterfly that makes Guadeloupe’s land mass. The highest peak on the island is the smouldering, rainforest wrapped volcano La Soufriere, at 1467m. The greenery was liquid; we drove up to the warm rock baths tucked into the side of the volcano and walked from there. The rain trickled off our puffing noses as we stepped higher and higher to the windy summit, its views obliterated by swirling misty clouds.

Glug Glug

Nick and I had a fantastic dive on sunken rock in Antigua before the day we set sail for Guadeloupe, 40 miles to the south. Between the two islands we hooked a marlin that eventually shook the lure, then landed a 25 pound Wahoo. These are terrific eating fish and we were able to give a feed to Paul and Lizzie on SY “Amaranth” when they anchored near us in Deshays. We had followed Amaranth’s progress across the Atlantic by listening to the SSB radio after a shroud broke; he finished the crossing on a jury rig. It was nice to put a face to Paul’s Auzzie accent and meet his lovely Canadian partner, Lizzie.

Guapeloupe is French, the croissants are baked fresh every morning, and quaint restaurants line the shore of Deshays. The people are proud of their Creole culture and language, and are a mix of the descendents from emancipated African slaves, Indian labourers and French colonialists. Even the native forest looks slightly French as the leaves are turing gold on many of the buttressed chestnut trees. The megaphyl rainforest plants and coconut plams give it a tropical France feel. Its all about the good things in life, instead of wine they grow sugar cane and distil many different brands of Rum.

Adele

Nick takes a stroll along the boom before the photoshoot.

A day sailing on Adele

What is Nick doing on Adele?????
Hanging out on the stern waiting to leave the dock.

Antigua Round the Island Race on NIMROD

Last Saturday morning we proudly put on our team “Mad Mongoose” T-shirts that the local bar had sponsored us with and climbed aboard Nimrod for the Round the Island race. Simon, our captain had been briefed the night before and the eight crew were each given a position on deck. In the cruiser racer class there was only three yachts; we were by far the biggest. I was on the Yankee sheets tailing for Jessie and Nick who manned the electric winches. Everything was electric so, as it was, I had the most frantic task of all. The tacking duel to the start line was fun then we steadily opened the gap loosing sight of our opponents after about three hours. The wind picked up to 25-30 knots on the nose. As Nick and Steve went forward to recoil the main halyard they became buried under a rush of cart-wheeling water and I lost sight of them. We all got saturated at some point. The finish line for Saturday was off Jolly Harbour, however we had to anchor in Five Islands bay on the other side of the isthmus because Nimrod draws 4 metres which is about 2 metres too much for Jolly harbour. The eastern side of the island was being pounded by a mounting swell than nearly dinghy wrecked the forward party going to shore for the Miss Antigua competition and BBQ with free rum. Doug, Ben, Steve and Jessie damaged the propeller during the landing, could not get the motor going and decided it would be unwise to attempt dingeying back out through the beach break anyway so they left Nick, Simon, George, Anna and myself on board. Nick swam ashore, got the dinghy going and returned to Nimrod without drama. Anna phoned a mate and arranged a windy ride around the headland to the party. That left four of us. I cooked a big meal in the ultra modern galley and we drank rum and Riocca till the roll wouldn’t inhibit our sleep. Nick and I were allocated the master cabin finished in superb varnished teak joinery and rich soft furnishings, lounge, bathroom etc. Unbeknownst to us the race was called off the next day due to bad weather; the VHF radio announcement not reaching us we gallantly raced on Sunday smashing the race record. The prize was awarded to us anyway at the Antiguan Yacht Club presentation night on Sunday evening. It was all in fun (now that we’d one).

Tomorrow Nick and I will be sailing to Guadeloupe. If we don’t extract ourselves now its only going to become more difficult and we can always check our sadness by the plan to return for Classics week and Antigua Race week in May before meeting up with Graeme.