Monday, May 21, 2012

Antigua to Guadaloupe

 We left Antigua and Nonsuch bay early on Monday morning. Way too early for me...
We caught our "fish of the day" already after half an hour. It was a Bigeye tuna. The sea was rather choppy but captain cleaned and fileted it right away on swimming platform. And we had our dinners covered for next three days.


 Sailing was good, maybe a bit too little wind for our liking. We approached Guadeloupe from north and entered Riviere salee at about three in the afternoon. We were quite nervous all the way down to the first bridge, since the channel is suppose to be only 2m deep and even a bit shallower on some spots and our boat has 2,1m draft. We were lucky enough to arrive at high tide, but at some points our depth meter showed only 2m. Somehow we got through without touching the ground.

We anchored at the north bridge.

 
 There was not much space and we were almost touching the mangroves. Which brought us closer to mosquitoes .... not even bug repellant helped :-(


At 4.30 in the morning the bridge opened and we sailed through. On the way we almost ran over an unlit buoy. One would expect buoys to be lit if the only time one can sail through is at night.

We anchored in front of Poine a Pietre and went to bed again. In the afternoon we went to the marina to ask about the buoys in the lagoon for the hurricane season. Our conversation was over in few seconds - all buoys are taken, no space, bye. 

Next afternoon we sailed to Le Saintes - we did our shopping and there was nothing more to do in Pointe a Pietre. The weather was rainy as we left and on the way we found ourselves between to rain fronts. This is how serious rain looks in Caribbean. And in the middle of it we had 30 knots of wind.




 We both got wet several time, but captain was one who got wet the most. He is such a good sport!


 On Saintes we anchored at Paine de sucree again, next to our friends Marion and Harald. Weather slowly improved, but there were still longer periods of rain. I looked up the statistic and month of May is one of the wettest here. And this is how much difference it makes. 

Firs two pictures are from end of March this year.



And this is how things look now - lush and green and everything is in bloom. I gess even rain can be good .......



 We've been working on boat again, again an unplanned matter. It is keeping us here and we plan to sail directly to Martinique on Tuesday. We will stay there a couple of days and try to repair our water heater. Then we will sail directly to Grenada to check the options to leave the boat there somewhere in a marina over summer. At least this is our plan. And plans are made to be changed .......

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