Feb 12 – 19, 2019 - Guadeloupe, Iles de Saintes and Deshaies

Sailing between Dominica and The Saintes Islands was a rough but fast ride, with big winds and great big waves, smashing us on the beam.  We hit speeds of nearly 9 knots. Allicat had departed about 30 minutes ahead of us and arrived early enough to snag a mooring ball and were able to secure their kayak to one for us. We fought 30-knot headwinds coming into the mooring field, and were very grateful that Ken jumped into his dinghy to assist me in tying up.

Checking in here was easy, same as in Martinique, at a designated PC terminal in the port and just as in Martinique, I handled the check-in for both us and Allicat while Frank enjoyed a beer and Ken waited gratefully. We paid in advance for 4 nights on the mooring and then we set off with Ken and Joann for a stroll through the small village and lunch. Pick anywhere that serves food, coffee or pastry here. You will not be disappointed. This place knocks the socks off Martinique when it comes to food. Our favorites were Ti Kaz ‘la and Toumbana which both require reservations. We strolled the lovely streets every day, taking in the beauty of this charming harbor village. The buildings here are just as pretty as a picture, painted in pastels and colors of rainbow sherbet. We rented a golf cart with Ken and Joann to explore the Fort and the windward side of the island, enjoying lunch at a pretty seaside café. 

We shopped and strolled and ate. I bought Frank a beautiful blue shirt to compliment his eyes for Valentine’s Day. We were so much in Heaven we extended our stay, but soon we had to get moving north and Allicat sadly had to head south. They are putting their boat in St. Lucia for hurricane season. On February 17^th, 

Frank and I sadly turned north to Deshaies at the top of Guadeloupe, arriving late afternoon.

Deshaies is the location of a show called Murder in Paradise (I think). Again, the food was outstanding no matter where we chose to dine and the hiking/trekking was fun and challenging. We walked up to the Botanical Gardens but were pretty much saturated by now so we turn around and wandered down to the now defunct Hemmingway’s restaurant and event venue that sits right on the water’s edge overlooking the anchorage. We don’t know what happened to it but it was a fantastic location for an upscale restaurant/bar/music venue.

Ever since arriving in the Caribbean We have wanted to visit Nevis, birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, vacation spot to the rich and famous and home to Suzy Gordon the sister of one of my former Cy-Fair high school classmates, Scott Gordon and his wife, Cathy also my friend and former classmate. We have been in touch with Suzy for several islands (ha ha, weeks). Our plan was to go to Nevis from Guadeloupe but the winds were not giving us that option, so I let Suzy know we were heading to Antigua and would see her in about a week. Next stop Antigua!

February 5 - 12, 2019 - Portsmouth, Dominica - Paradise Survives

Dominica-nica-nica what a beautiful and resilient island! As news reports stated, Dominica was “Knocked to its knees” by hurricane Maria’s direct hit, claimed as her first victim in a rampage that tore through the Caribbean in late 2017. This island was an agricultural giant, supplying & supporting much of the Caribbean. The canopy of the island was sheered off by the storm leaving the perfect environment for an abundance of Morning Glory to grow over the island claiming a large portion of the trees and vegetation. There are still areas that resemble a war zone but for the most part, the people of Dominica who have trickled back to the island are rebuilding with the help of foreign and domestic aid. We were happy to see widespread evidence of American relief. I’m so proud of our citizens who, in the face of our own disasters, continue to generously support others in need. What nature destroyed of her own will take much more time to regenerate. 

We enjoyed a fairly decent sail from St. Pierre up to the bottom of Dominica but then lost our wind in the lee of the mountains and ended up motoring to Prince Rupert Bay at Portsmouth. We called ahead to the P.A.Y.S. office and were assigned to Eddison a founding member, a soft spoken, gentle giant of a man who took good care of us during our weeklong stay. Locals who were former “boat boys”-cum-certified guides and business owners have joined together to establish P.A.Y.S., Portsmouth Association of Yacht Services. They help yachts onto a mooring on arrival, provide 24/7 security, guided tours, arrange transportation, fuel, propane, water, laundry services, etc. They make it real easy for visitors to want to stay for a while. Prices here are very decent and amenities are close at hand. We immediately booked a tour of the whole island for the following day.

Self explanatory mural at Portsmouth

crystal clear waters (view from one of our hikes)

Paul, our tour guide was a native resident of the island, a veritable "herbologist" and had the most incredibly positive attitude. As he drove us about, pointing out areas that had once provided abundant cultivated crops and wild-grown fruits and vegetables, he also pointed out the path of destruction of Maria and noted areas of natural re-growth already beginning. We were heartsick hearing the stories and seeing the devastation. Even living for nearly 40 years in a hurricane zone, I couldn’t get my head around this virtual Garden of Eden that was nearly wiped from the face of the Earth. Just as a river will re-route itself however, the people of Dominica have returned and are rebuilding with the resources they have at hand. We saw a lot of homes that had once been glorious, patched together with anything at hand just to provide a shelter for the time being. Many have managed to replant gardens and what they don’t consume goes to a roadside stand to aid their subsistence. Faith is very strong around the island. Some of the Churches that were taken by Maria have been restored in the form of a lean-to with an awning and folding chairs or hand-hewn bench seating. They greeted us with a smile and a blessing, wherever we went. We never heard a complaint or witnessed any form of self-pity or begging. They don’t beg. They just look forward with pride, courage and optimism.

Our tour took us to the island’s chocolate factory where we not only toured; we tasted and bought a large variety of chocolates with exotic ingredients. From time to time, Paul would stop on the roadside to point out wild fruits and berries, and herbs such lemongrass, and would pick some for all of us. He loaded us up with Bay leaves, cinnamon and so on. Just about every exotic fruit is /was grown here. We drove to the Atlantic side where the hurricane first hit, seeing how the beach was moved back several hundreds of yards. We also visited the original Caribe Indian village site where descendants still make handcrafts. We stopped for lunch at a lovely little mountainside café that featured great homemade local dishes. Of course we stopped at a waterfall for a swim. The tour was amazing.

Vernie (SeaBreeze)

Frank's Island drink

plantain chips with curry aioli dip - yum!

Our second day on Dominica we were visited by a couple rushing by in their dinghy on their way to take some local people to Guadeloupe for the day, but who stopped long enough to introduce themselves as Joanne and Ken Reed aboard a catamaran called Allicat, from Oriental, N. Carolina. Again, we instantly bonded and spent most of the rest of our time on Dominica with them. Meanwhile, while they were away, we hiked the trails up around Fort Shirley – fantastic “get your heart rate up” hike with panoramic views of several bays from atop the heads – highly recommended! In the afternoon, we took the boat tour up the river into the most amazing natural habitat that, although not far from the main town feels as though we were deep into the jungle. This river is where several scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean II were filmed. We passed by the old swamp witch’s cabin that was built by the film company. Unfortunately, the cabin was torn up during the storm but you can still see remnants of the pier and shack. Truly this is the most amazing and tranquil river trip we have ever been on.

on the river

swamp witch"s shack

OOPS!

The beach at our anchorage

Ken and Joanne returned and swept us up like old friends, introducing us to several locals and transplants from the US, Canada and the UK, who own and run businesses in Dominica. We lunched with them at a lovely little seaside Café called Keeping It Real, where we stuffed ourselves on massive grilled local lobsters while enjoying live jazz performed by yet another friend of theirs. Another day, we taxied over to SeaBreeze (one of the stops on our tour by the way), where Vernie had rebuilt her little beach café/country store. She cooked up the most delicious Caribbean chicken curry. She also makes and sells flavored rums. Her specialty is peanut rum. It apparently sells like hotcakes!

Eating and touring…we finished up our week with another hike with Ken and Joanne, followed by dinner (for the 2^ndor 3^rdtime), at Seadog’s restaurant in the bay. The morning of February 13^th, we sailed with Allicat up to I the Island of Terre-de-Haut in the Iles des Saintes, Guadeloupe.

January 28 – Feb. 5, 2019 Up the West Side of Martinique – New Discoveries & New Friends

Grande Anse D’Arlet was a beautiful bay, yet extremely crowded. It’s interesting watching other yacht people begin posturing when we are entering into a crowded bay. Folks get a bit territorial. As we approached, heads began to pop up from companionways & cockpits and a few actually stretched into a rigid sitting position snapping their heads our way. One guy even stood to full height, walking around his boat sort of puffing his chest out to us. It was really funny because we realized we probably act the same way when the “boat shoe” is on the other foot. This is the “Alpha Cruiser” marking his territory so he is not anchored upon.  I was up on the bow as Frank was driving us around to find a clear spot to drop the hook and others are yelling to me (not the one driving, mind you), where not to put our anchor, and warning us not to kill any turtles with our anchor. DUH! In anchorages with a lot of grass we are always extra cautious because we know that there will be turtles about and we don’t want to cause harm to any feeding at the bottom. We avoid grassy areas anyway because the holding is not good – Duh, again. We eventually found a tiny sandy spot of good ground, and I aimed for it like a bull’s-eye. Bingo! We held fast. No harm, no foul. There was quite a swell coming into the bay making it pretty uncomfortable. The rain was continuing to assault us in microbursts so we decided to have dinner on board whilst Destiny got her free rainshower.  Just after we got to sleep, a disco on the nearby shore pumped up the volume and the strobe lights! Ha! We didn’t sleep very well.

After a psychedelic night of sleep under disco strobes until 3:00 AM, we couldn’t wait to get moving, so we made haste toward Fort de France. Following recommendations in our newest latest and greatest Doyle cruising guide, we decided to anchor at Trois Ilets across the bay from the main port, where paradise awaited in the form of a “Photographic town” flanked by a lovely calm bay in which to anchor, a golf course, daily local market, beautiful historic homes, great French Creole restaurants, a butcher shop, a French bakery and ferry access to Fort de France. Upon entering, we found several yachts but very few with people aboard and certainly no overcrowding. It was tranquil. The water was dark and murky, and yet the quiet was a welcome change. We anchored just off the golf course making Frank anxious to go exploring in the dinghy. As he took off to do just that I stayed aboard to catch up on sleep.

Frank returned a while later to report that this place is a ghost town…and but for two others, all those yachts we see anchored nearby are abandoned, derelict and probably crawling with who-knows-what. He had difficulty finding a spot to land the dinghy, and when he did he found the town completely run down and closed up. He did not find a bakery, a market or a restaurant nearby. Apparently Elvis had left the building and we didn’t get the memo! We ate aboard, enjoyed a quiet night and then set off for Fort St. Louis Bay in Fort de France on Tuesday morning. This was a “business trip” for us, meaning we were here to hit the mega stores (Carrefour, Decathlon, Hyper U), and then move on up the way. The dinghy dock is large and secure, right on the town’s waterfront, and adjacent to the cruise ship dock, the ferry wharf, the town park & the local bus station. Crowded and busy but convenient so we were OK to put up with feeling we were at sea (while at anchor) for a couple of days. Mega shopping done, we took off for St. Pierre at the top of the island.

arriving at Fort de France

in the anchorage beside Fort St. Louis

 St. Pierre is significant because of its proximity to the Mount Pelee volcano; it literally sits at the base. Historically this is where the European settlers annihilated the last of the island’s Carib Indians in 1658, but not before those Indians uttered horrible curses upon the settlers, invoking the mountain to exact revenge on the great white invaders. Eventually, on Ascension Day a couple of 100 years later after St. Pierre had been well developed into the Paris of the Caribbean and one of the wealthiest and most affluent cities of the island chains, it did just that in the form of a series of massive volcanic eruptions that not only wiped out this entire region of plantations, estates and the waterfront city, it buried over a dozen merchant ships in the bay. Today, visitors can take a self-guided walk through the burned out ruins of the once grandiose waterfront town.  Buoys in the bay mark the graveyard of the ships that are buried beneath. St. Pierre never returned to its former glory, and in fact it is now a quaint and very humble seaside town with a soft sand beach. The bay is exposed to a lot of swell but is a nice place for small private yachts. Fate sent us two wonderful new friends on our first morning ashore. I was standing in the local fresh market talking to Frank when a lady turned to me and said, “It sure is nice to hear a southern accent! You must be American!” That’s how we met Gayle and Darrell Smith who are sailing the Caribbean on their yacht, “Gone Bambu”. We formed an instant bond and spent most of our time, stuck like glue to them over the next couple of days. They are heading over to Bonaire about a month ahead of us and then transit the Panama Canal to sail across the Pacific. We had a lot to share with them, and in turn they gave us some good insight for our Caribbean sailing. It was hard to bid adieu to them but we did with a promise to never say goodbye.  And we never did get even one picture of those guys. We were having too much fun!

Frank in the St. Pierre market

St. Pierre sunset

Mount Pelee

ruins of the Opera House

Fate has been real good to us since arriving in the Caribbean. We are meeting some amazing people and forming wonderful bonds here and it just keeps getting better.

At 8:30 on the morning of February 5^th, we moved on from Martinique and onward to the top of Dominica.

January 1 – January 27, 2019 – Martinique – Part 1, (the Southern Part)

How wonderful to wake up in a new year with a new slate in Martinique, our gateway to the Caribbean. Several things happened in that first week of the year, including reuniting with Sabbatical III and meeting fellow Island Packet owners Mette and Ottar of s/v Tiril from Norway. Wasting no time getting the gennaker dropped off for repair, and arranging other general maintenance matters, we put business first. The biggest challenge was to pin down the rigger to repair our main furling mechanism. He and his team are the best and are therefore in very high demand. Tradesmen were giving us appointments 2 – 3 weeks out. We were pleased just to get their attention because this is THE PLACE to get anything and everything done for your yacht, which makes it worth the wait, and we will make the time.  We had to move into Le Marin, however, to be accessible to them.

Raising the generator to reinstall bolts

Fortunately after motoring around and around the crowded bay we found the ideal spot to anchor with excellent holding, close to shops, laundry, groceries, restaurants and services. This is important because the bay is prone to sustained high winds and although there are hundreds of mooring balls around, they are not maintained. Many moorings held derelict boats; rusted out hulks that in my imagination were teeming with rats and roaches. The entire bay is littered with these things, some half sunken while others hugged the mangroves. We never found out whether they were remnants of previous hurricanes or just abandoned by those whose pockets ran empty. Perhaps the reason we found a great spot to anchor is that it was surrounded by several of these ghostly floating hulks of ruin.  

 We didn’t care much for the cafes and restaurants in the marina complex, preferring the smaller local cafes lining the sidewalk across the street.  

After about two weeks of waiting, the rigger contacted us letting us know he could not work on our boat until we were more readily accessible so he was rearranging boats to make space for us at his dock. Talk about a scrunch – we got squeezed in on a side tie but with three other boats tied up alongside and to the aft of Destiny. We became a gangplank for the other yachts. Not ideal and yet we were so happy to finally get their attention we didn’t dare complain.

We rented a car that weekend while Destiny was tied up at the rigger’s dock to get a good look around. This island is not like any Caribbean island we have ever visited. It’s more like a south Pacific paradise – a French Hawaii as it were. It rains a lot; often only in bursts but we saw a tremendous amount of rainfall during the month of January. Certainly this is why the island is so beautiful. It is French and with that comes French bakeries that are abundant and have been threatening to lure us into sinful Carb-hell.  Happy shoppers parade around daily with baguette in hand, including my husband (while I go more for the flaky buttery croissants and pain au chocolat). Restaurants are hit and miss but we found a few worthy of a return visit.

part of the 5-course lunch at Zanzibar

Zanzibar in the marina area of Le Marin gets our top vote for exquisite food in both taste and in presentation. It’s pricey to dine out, even in the smaller cafes but then it is the Caribbean after all. We quickly claimed favorite hangouts – Cayali beach bar is a spot that has dingy access and red umbrella covered tables right on the little beach and for whatever reason, we gravitated there several times. Apparently there are 14 rum distilleries on Martinique. I wont testify to that but there is certainly no shortage.

Hanging out at a beach cafe in St. Anne

Frank and George aboard Kundalini

While still on that dock awaiting our repaired furler, Kundalini arrived bearing George and Thomas from their trans Atlantic passage. Like us and our other friends they have “post passage” work to do so we all fit one another in for meals and social time as often as possible and as schedules allowed. Of course we took the guys to our favorite beach café, but the best meals were served to us on board Kundalini, thanks to Chef Thomas.

Thomas and George

One of Thomas' creations

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photo taken just before the Green Flash at sunset

We split our time between Le Marin and St. Anne Bay preferring the latter whenever possible during those weeks. This lovely bay is massive and can accommodate literally hundreds of yachts of all sizes. The entire area is like nothing we have ever seen in our 11 years of cruisingBONUS: we witnessed the Green Flash during countless sunsets from here whilst sitting right on the back porch of Destiny. We should charge for this, eh? We understand why folks sail here and get sucked into staying for the entire season. When you want a swim, you bop over to St. Anne where large turtles feed on the sea grass in the bay and swim beside your boat. Hiking trails take you to gorgeous beaches, a Water Boat comes around to fill your tanks for pennies and the charming waterfront boasts a couple of great dinghy docks. When you need services or large supermarkets, you bop back over to Marin, a mere three NM away. Life is too easy here.

Beach walk in St. Anne

Also during this time we received word from our beloved friends Ute and Hans (Taimada) who decided to sail up from Grenada just to visit with us for a while. What a thrill! Except for a brief time when we traveled to Germany a couple of years ago to celebrate Oktoberfest with them we haven’t been with Taimada since Thailand in 2013. Ute is presently wrapping up her 4^thsuspense novel and is working furiously to get it to her editor, so for them to make this herculean effort to spend time with us has filled our hearts beyond measure.

Reunion with Hans and Ute

Farewell lunch with Mette (s/v Tiril)

With George and Thomas celebrating their arrival

Sunset from Cayali beach cafe

Eventually we got the Gennaker sail back from the loft and the furler reinstalled. Ute and Hans returned to the Grenadines, George was preparing for the arrival of his wife, Laura and Mark had flown home to visit family leaving us nothing more to do in the southern tip of the island but bid a very fond farewell to Mette and Ottar, promising to most certainly meet again. Time to get rolling!!! But it was pouring rain. What to do? Most places aren’t ideal for anchoring in the rain if you can’t see the bottom and haven’t been there before. We eventually made a move when the rain eased and on the late morning of January 27^th, we sailed up to Grand Anse D’Arlet, just a few miles away but it was forward progress nonetheless.

Shopping at a local market

lunch on the beach

Lunch with Mark and Laura on the beach

Clement Rum Factory tour

Beach lunch