One of the many wonderful experiences we have had while
sailing this year, are all the interesting and wonderful people we have met.
Some people we only chatted to for a few minutes, while with others, we spent a
considerable time in their company.
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| View from Passages of Falmouth Harbour and Antigua Yacht Club Skullduggery behind the big white boat. |
For example, while we were at the dinghy dock, we started chatting
to a couple – Sue and Jon who were having a drink at Skullduggery – the
“restaurant/bar” at the dinghy dock in Falmouth Harbour – then another sailor
Ron and his dog Bella, who we had met at the Jolly Harbour Marina and then
later when we were anchored in Falmouth.
Each person/couple we met, has their own interesting stories
to tell and they are always willing to offer or pass on any advice about a
place we may be visiting in the near future or inform us about something that
worked well on their yacht. For example, Ron told us about Deshaies (Day-ay :
our first port of call when we arrive in Gaudeloupe) that there are mooring
balls now which at the moment are free to use. At bit of information that we
also found on Active Captian (Android app).
At the moment Mel is gathering as much information as
possible about solar panels and the amount of power one needs on a boat as we
are always very low on power so are having to run the generator almost on a
daily basis to keep our batteries charged. The biggest comsumption of power is
the fridge and freezer which we have noticed is having to run more often the further south we go.
As planned, on Sunday we left Jolly Harbour Marina and headed
for Falmouth Harbour. We said our “Good byes” to John and Linda of Blue Moon
who are staying in Jolly Harbour Marina
for the rest of the Hurricaine season before heading south to Grenanda.
We had to motor sail
as we were going directly into the wind. It was quite surreal as we had visited Falmouth Harbour in December 2011, but not from this
vantage point. We sailed passed Pigeon Beach, one of our favourite places the
past time we were here. Falmouth Harbour looked quite different from when we
were last here for two reasons: one, the way we were approaching the harbour
and two there were not many yachts, mega yachts and boats in the harbour and
marinas. Most people are either further south or north – out of the Hurricane
zone.
We found
a good place to anchor and made ourselves comfortable and settled down for the
evening.
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| Nelsons Dockyard English Harbour |
Monday
morning we walked to English Harbour and reminisced about our previous visit.
Naturally we had to go to the Bakery where there are always fresh goodies to
buy. We enjoyed lunch at one of the local restaurants before heading to
Skullduggery where the Wi-Fi was fast and strong. We stayed there for
sundowners.
Tuesday
as we were preparing to spend the day at Pigeon Beach, we heard from Linda and
John on the VHF radio that they were in Falmouth Harbour and had come through
from Jolly Harbour to spend the day with us. It was good seeing them once
again.
We
walked down to English Harbour once again and showed them around and had lunch
at yet another local place along the main road between Falmouth Harbour and
English Harbour.
Linda
and John had caught the bus - in fact two buses to get to English Harbour.
One from Jolly Harbour to St John’s, then from St John’s to English Harbour as
there is not a direct route from one to the other.
We are hoping
to see John and Linda in October when we will be in Grenada at the same time.
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| Mel fast asleep on Pigeon Beach |
Wednesday
morning we went to Pigeon Beach and spent most of the day there. It is a lovely
beach as the water is so clear and a great temperature. There is plenty of
shade to park under and there are places to buy drinks and food if you want. Many
locals spend their free time there and it was good to see families spending
quality time together.
For
sundowners we had a visitor – Han from Amsterdam on his boat Condor. We had
noticed Han coming into Falmouth after dark on Monday evening and we recognised
him as having seen him and his boat in Simpson Bay in St Martin. He came on
board and spent the next 1 ½ hours telling us how he had sailed from Amsterdam
to St Martin. It was an interesting story.
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| View from Shirley Heights of English Harbour and Falmouth Harbour |
Thursday
we checked out of Antigua as Friday looked like a better day to sail to
Guadeloupe. Afterwards, we caught a taxi up to Shirley Heights for lunch. It is
a magical place as it seems as if you can see forever. One can also see why
Antigua and English Harbour in particular was such an important place strategically
for the English, as their ships were safe in the harbour, nobody could see
them, but they could see others coming from miles away.
FYI – English sailors were often
called Limeys because they would eat limes from Antigua to prevent themselves
from getting scurvy. When they were in town and their ships were in the port,
they had plenty of time on their hands so the local phase “to lime” came to
mean to “hang out”. - Information
taken from Chris Doyle’s The Cruising Guide to the Leeward Islands – 13 edition.
Mel and
I both felt quite sad to be leaving Antigua but the weather was good to be
heading south, so on Friday morning by 6.00am our anchor was up and we were
heading out of Falmouth Harbour.
Our sail
to Deshaies was a fast one. We anticipated that we would get to Deshaies by
4.00pm at the latest as we try to make the sail comfortable for BOTH of us
(mainly me) which means that the sails are reduced accordingly and we try to
maintain at least 5 knots. Well we averaged 6.5 knots with only the genoa out
and we were tied up to a mooring ball by 12.45pm!
The wind
was between 15 – 20 knots but it was coming aft of the beam – meaning it was
coming from the side of the boat towards the back – it was pushing us in the
direction we were going! Hoorah!!! Yes the seas were a little too rough for me,
the swells were 1.5 – 2 metres and it took some getting used to bu,t I
eventually did settle down and relaxed.
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| Mel fight with our first bite. |
Most of
the first hour of a sail is my worst, as I find it takes me quite a while to
settle and to get used to the movement of the boat. It is quite difficult at
times with a captain like I have who is like Skippy – the bush Kangaroo – is always
up and down trimming the sail or doing something or other. Once Captain Skippy
is happy with everything, then I seem to start relaxing into the sail.
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| Our second much smaller catch It was VERY small. |
We
actually had “some” success with our attempts at fishing – most times we are
sailing we have our trolling rod out. We had a HUGE bite from a Mahi Mahi - it
gave Mel such a fight that our whole line reeled out. When Mel reeled the line
back in, it had gone but it had taken some of our lure. We put the rod out
again and within 10 mins we had another bite. We caught a small Mahi Mahi, but decided to release
it as it needed to grow a bit bigger.
Information taken from Chris Doyle’s The Cruising Guide to
the Leeward Islands – 13 edition.
“Guadeloupe
is French and is a department of France. Basse Terre is the capital of
Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe is known as Karukera (Island of Pretty Waters) by the
Caribs and it has a population of 330,000. Sugar cane is widely grown and the
local “rhum” is of great importance to France. Tourism is also very important.
Guadeloupe
consists of two islands in the shape of a butterfly – a rather lopsided one. It
has a narrow channel running through the middle of the two islands. This
channel mainly consists of mangroves.
The
larger mountainous island is called “Basse Terre” (low land) while the smaller,
low island is called “Grande Terre” (large land) which is the older of the two.
Grande Terre was once mountainous but over time – millions of years its
mountains have eroded. Basse Terre is a young volcanic island.”
Deshaies
is in the northern end of Guadeloupe on its west coast. It is pronounced
Day-ay.
As we
were coming into Deshaies a lady on a cat shouted “Hello” to us – she was
flying an Australian flag and is from Brisbane.
Not far
behind us another boat came into Deshaies harbour – this boat had also been
sailing south from Antigua, but had sailed out of English Harbour at about the
same time we sailed out of Falmouth. We instantly recognised them – they were
on the cat Fata Morgana – Ivo, Mira and Maya – we first met them in Nevis, then
again in Montserrat. They are originally from Bulgaria but are now living in
Canada. They have taken two years off work to sail and have already been
sailing for over a year now.
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| Deshaies Harbour |
Once we
had settled down and had some lunch, we took the dinghy down so Mel could go
into town and check us in, although we were not very optimistic as we knew that
Friday 15 August was a public holiday in Guadeloupe – Assumption Day. As Mel
made his way to the main dinghy dock, he stopped off and spoke to the lady on
the Cat with the Australian flag – Bev and then on to Ivo, Mira and Maya. As
predicted, everything was closed so we could only check in on Saturday morning
which we did.
Bev
invited is for sundowners – so we went across to her cat a Voyage 38ft – it is
South African made.
Bev
sails solo – she has sailed for the past 30 odd years. She is in the same line
of business that Mel is in, but with another software company. She has lived
all over the world from Zambia to the U.K., New Zealand, Senegal and a few
other NW and NE African countries. We spent about 2 hours on her boat chatting
away before we went back to ours and settled down for the night.
Saturday
morning and Mel was up early to check us in. The French actually make it so
easy – it is all done on computer and on line.
There is
a dress shop/gift shop in Deshaies called Le Pelican where you pay 4EU for the
use of the computer and you check in.
When Mel
had checked us in, he came to fetch me and we went for a “walk about” the town.
Naturally we ended up at the Bakery! The town centre is lovely and very
colourful but most people only speak French! Never mind we will manage. There
are of course LOTS of restaurants and they seem to stay open quite late at
night! One restaurant had their music blaring until 3.30am!!! (While writing
this update a few people are singing at one of the restaurants – all in French
of course – we are hoping they don’t continue until the wee hours - it is already sailors midnight – 9.00pm!)
We
thought we had better work off what we had consumed so we went in the dinghy to
the entrance of the harbour where there was some good snorkelling spots.
It was
quite magical as there were SO many fish swimming about. We were at one point
totally surrounded by little fish. We had to be careful as well as there were a
few jelly fish around and we didn’t want to take a chance as we didn’t know
what type of jelly fish they were.
Sunday
we decided to go on the river walk that the Chris Doyle travel guide had
suggested. We radioed Bev to see if she wanted to join us and she was keen
along with Mark and Tina on Rainbow, who we had met briefly the day before. Mel
thought he would also invite Ivo, Mira and Maya, so at 10.00am we all met on
the dinghy dock and started our river walk. In the guide book it mentioned that
when we reach one section of the river walk where there was a lovely waterfall,
if you walk for an extra “20 mins” you would find an even better waterfall. |
| Mel relaxing in the lovely cool waters |
Mel,
Ivo, Mira, Maya, Bev and I were keen to walk/climb further up to the top
waterfall which should have been 20mins further up but took us a lot longer as
we took the wrong path but was it worth it!
I
couldn’t take my camera to the waterfall as it was behind a HUGE boulder and
there was a very small space to climb up and over to the waterfall – you also
had to “swim” to this very small space which of course I couldn’t
do with a
camera.
We had
to return back to the first waterfall the same way, but from there we could go
back to town on the road which should have taken us about 15 mins but it took
us longer as we were all feeling a bit weary and it was extremely steep going
downhill.
Our
plans for the week ahead all depend on the tropical wave which has a low
attached to one end and could develop into a cyclonic system. We intend staying
in Deshaies for another day or two, then sail south (8nm) to Pigeon Cove, then
we can’t make up our mind where to next…. Do we stay longer in Guadeloupe or
head further south ….. tough decision! There are so many interesting people to
meet along the way.
Anyway
take care. Until next time wherever we might be.
Love
Captain
Mel and Admiral Caryn /xx
