Les Saintes

We are now at Terre-de-Haut; we spent a coupe of days at the main anchorage near a lovely little village called Le Bourg. We met up with Ben, Kristle and Amber again and had two lovely walks. We walked across the island to a picturesque beach which is almost enclosed by a circle of small joined islands with only a narrow passage through. Unfortunately anchoring is no longer permitted, otherwise we would have moved there. We went exploring Fort Napoleon, a beautifully restored fort and interesting Museum. The parapets have been made into a cactus garden and were full of iguanas.

Kristle baby-sat that night, so Chris and I had an alfresco meal out in a restaurant overlooking the anchorage. Yesterday we motored around an outcrop called the ‘Sugar Loaf’, to an anchorage with some super snorkelling. We swam over lots of different brightly coloured fish and unusual underwater plants just a few metres from the boat. We met up with an American family on another Lagoon 420 who Chris had been corresponding with on the internet. It was nice to meet them face to face and exchanged notes. Tomorrow we sail to Deshaies on Guadeloupe for a few days and then to Antigua where we plan to stay for about three weeks.

Dominica

We arrived in Dominica on Tuesday evening and were surprised to see that ‘Norn’ was still there. Kristle and Ben introduced us to some friends of theirs from Scotland, Peter and Gordon, who are sailing in the same direction as us. They all came over for a roast lamb dinner on Wednesday and it turns out that Gordon used to sail Scottish Island class boats, the same class of boats as Chris’s father’s boat, Gigha, in fact he thought he may have sailed Gigha once.


On Thursday we did the Indian River trip with Peter and Gordon. The boatman rows you along a meandering river through rain forest for about a mile. He points out all the unusual trees and plants and we saw iguanas, blue herons and humming birds. It rained for a lot of the trip, which added to the tropical rain forest ambiance.

I loved the calm and peacefulness of the place. Even the children were quiet.

On Easter Sunday, the Easter Bunny hid lots of little chocolate eggs all over Octopus. The children collected them in baskets they had made the day before and shared them out before they all melted in the heat. The weather then became disappointing, very wet and dull and a large swell was coming into the bay, Norn moved on because of the rolling and even Octopus was rolling a lot, when she is usually very steady. We decided to move onto Les Saintes, a group of
Guadeloupe’s off-shore islands

Sinking of the Atlantis

We left St-Pierre, Martinique on Tuesday the 18th of March and were only a couple of miles off when we noticed a ship that didn’t look quite right? As we sailed nearer it was obvious that it was some sort of catamaran fishing boat or ferry with one hull sinking. We had just stumbled on a real life rescue with a helicopter hovering and the lifeboat just arriving to transfer the crew and passengers off her to safety. Lots of local boats and another yacht were standing by to assist. Apparently two crew members had already been air lifted and while we were there the lifeboat was attempting to tow the ship to shallower waters. We circled around, at a distance. The children couldn’t believe their luck, a real sinking ship! We took a few photos and went on our way.

Granny Visits Octopus

Margaret, who is 87 years young this year, flew all the way out to Martinique to visit us. She spent a week in a nearby hotel where we visited her for days on the beach and a ferry trip to Fort-de-France. The children enjoyed using the swimming pool at her hotel. She then moved onto Octopus for a week with us. We spent a couple of days at Anse Mitan with a day sail around to Trois Islets, a very pretty little anchorage between three very tiny islands. We sailed to Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, for a change of scene and to do some shopping, and then on to St-Pierre for a few days. St-Pierre was destroyed by a volcanic explosion in 1902 with only one survivor out of its 28,000 inhabitants. We took the children on a tour to look at the remains of the old city and meet a man whose grandparents lived in St-Pierre at the time, but were out of the city on that dreadful day. Margaret flew home on the 17th of March and we then sailed onto Dominica.

Bequia to Martinique

We left Bequia on Monday the 11th to sail to Martinique. We hoped to sail close to St Lucia but the wind had other ideas and we decided to do one long tack away from St Lucia and then tack towards Martinique the following morning. Twelve miles off Martinique the wind died and we began to motor. At about five in the morning we slowed down and found we had picked up a bizarre collection of empty quash bottles and ropes around one of the rudders. We cut as much off as possible but it meant only using one engine and limping into the nearest anchorage at 1.5 knots. This took us eight hours to do twelve miles. We reached the pretty village of Anse d’Arlet in the afternoon. The children all went swimming and Chris swam under Octopus to free the tangle. We ended up with a black bag full of bottles and various coloured ropes which were wrapped around the rudder and occasionally had been getting caught in the propeller.

We set off early the next morning planning to go to Marin to catch up with our friends on ‘Norn’. We arrived at Ste. Anne and were just motoring up the channel to Marin when we notice the generator had stopped and we were low on battery power. Rather then negotiate winding through the reefs on low power we went and anchored off Ste. Anne. Just as we were setting the anchor we noticed the boat next to us had some familiar faces on board. Rob and Ruth, who crossed the Atlantic with us, were busy on the boat next to us getting ready for their next trip through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific. We invited the couple they are crewing for and them over to lunch and had a nice time catching up and hearing their plans for their voyage.

In the evening we took the rib up the channel to Marin and found Ben, Kristle and Amber on Norn who were beginning to wonder where we had got to. We spent a pleasant couple of hours exchanging stories of our trips from Bequia.

Next day we moved up to anchor next to Norn up at Marin, the girls could play together and we could go ashore and stock up at the big supermarket. The last few islands we have been to were a bit limited on supplies, so I was looking forward to all the French food and was not disappointed. Chris found that the generator problem had been caused by weed being sucked in and blocking the filter.

Over the weekend we travelled in convoy with Norn to Ste Anne for one night, then Anse d’Arlet for another and then on to Anse Mitan on Pointe du Bout. We arrived, as planned, in time for Chris’s Mum arriving. Margaret is in a hotel just twenty minutes walk away from our anchorage and we our now doing the touristy stuff again.