26 January 2012 Terre D’En Haut to Ilet a Cabrit, Iles des Saintes
We had another restless night. At nine o’clock, Glenys spotted someone leaving the Islet a Cabrit anchorage, so we quickly started the engine and motored across before someone else nabbed the mooring. In fact there were three moorings available – the other yachts must have sneaked out earlier without us seeing them.
There are only ten moorings in the anchorage and they are obviously highly desired because one catamaran went over to the main town this morning leaving one of their crew in a dinghy tied up to their mooring. They weren’t going to lose their place!
Ilet a Cabrit is a lovely protected anchorage with clear water and an acceptable beach. We went for a snorkel on the west end of the beach. It was pleasant in the clear water. Not a huge number of fish, but I spotted two Nassau Grouper which would have each made a fine meal. Glenys is really getting into snorkelling – she dived down to 13 metres today.
After lunch, we went for a dive further around the north-west headland. The water was very clear, but it was a rubbish dive site – only 12 metres deep and a flat sea bed with few fish. We chilled out for the rest of the afternoon reading. Glenys made Goat Curry for dinner in harmony with the fact that we’re anchored at the Island of Goats.
27 January 2012 Ilet a Cabrit, Iles des Saintes
It was a lovely, quiet peaceful night. After breakfast, we went for a walk on the small island. We first walked up along a disused concrete track to the ruins of Fort Josephine. There’s a fine view of the anchorage on the way up. After wandering around the ruins, we headed back down taking a small detour along another path half way down. This led to more ruined buildings and behind those a faint path headed down to a very rugged, windswept beach covered with big lumps of coral and flotsam.
We spent the rest of the day mooching about - Glenys took the opportunity to defrost her fridge while I mostly read a book.
28 January 2012 Ilet a Cabrit to Pigeon Island, Guadeloupe
We had a fantastic sail across to Guadeloupe. I started off with a full reef in the main and jib, but the wind stayed very light for the first ten minutes. Foolishly, I let out the reefs on both sails and within five minutes had 20 knots of wind. We were on a broad reach, so it wasn’t too much of a problem at first.
As we approached the shore of Guadeloupe, the wind picked up, gusting above 30 knots, so we had too much sail up and I had to hand steer because the autopilot couldn’t cope with the weather helm. It was only five miles across the passage, so we didn’t bother to reef again, but stuck with it. We were doing over eight knots for five minutes with a peak boat speed of 9.5 knots – a record for us. We were totally out of control…
We had a good sail along west side of Guadeloupe, managing to pick up some wind on the leeward side of an island for a change, so we only had to motor for the last hour.
We anchored in the bay opposite Pigeon Island, which is a marine park. There are several dive centres on the beach, which take tourists out to Pigeon Island on diving or snorkelling trips. After lunch, we dinghied over to the island and went snorkelling at a few places around the circumference looking for a good place to go diving tomorrow. The reef doesn’t seem to be as spectacular as the brochures say, but we had a great time swimming with a couple of green turtles for ten minutes.
In the late afternoon, we went ashore, dumped five days’ worth of garbage and walked a mile down the road to a supermarket. We still weren’t able to buy any fresh baguettes, but we did buy some king prawns as a treat for dinner.
29 January 2012 Pigeon Island, Guadeloupe
There were big katabatic gusts of wind last night and I had to get up in the middle of the night to take clothes and our bimini side panels from the guard rails because they were making such a racket. It was hard to drag myself out of bed this morning.
I’m starting to get withdrawal symptoms due to having no Internet connection for five days, so we’re planning to go along the coast to Deshaises tomorrow. Then we’re planning to sail across to Antigua a few days later, so that we can meet Julie and Graham when they arrive on the 5th February on their cruise ship.
We went for a scuba dive on the west side of Pigeon Island. The dive was great apart from the other twenty divers milling about, scaring off the fish. We obviously chose a bad time – don’t go diving on Pigeon Island at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning. I was playing with my £450 underwater camera strobe which I received as a Christmas present – all of the photos came out over exposed because I obviously had all the settings wrong. My photographs were better without it…
We mooched about in the afternoon. Glenys was editing some more of her Galley Slave cookbook and I dug out the clarinet for the first time in a month. It only took two minutes before my lips were aching and five minutes before I couldn’t blow another note – I’ve got to start practising every day to develop my embouchure.
30 January 2012 Pigeon Island to Deshaies, Guadeloupe
We were woken up by the sound of laughter nearby our boat. I opened the curtains and blearily peered out at a group of tourists snorkelling. There are quite a few Green Turtles that feed in this bay and snorkelling with the turtles is a major attraction. But at seven o'clock in the morning – give me a break!
We motored up the coast for eight miles to Deshaies, which is a nice anchorage, but katabatic winds shriek down from the surrounding hills. We paid $50US for an internet connection for a month, which is also valid in Antigua, and settled down for an afternoon of catching up on emails, surfing the Internet and updating our website.
31 January 2012 Deshaies, Guadeloupe
I had a frustrating day, trying to sort out our finances. Before we left the UK, we put our cash into savings accounts which paid interest to us every month, so that we’d have some income. These savings accounts had miserable interest rates of 0.5%, but gave us a 2.2% bonus for twelve months.
The bonuses have now expired and I need to transfer the money into other accounts that will pay better interest rates. All of the “high” interest deals are for new customers, so we have to open new bank accounts. It’s a ridiculous system because all we do is to take our money out of one bank and put it into another bank. What ever happened to banks rewarding loyal customers?
The process of setting up bank accounts is very frustrating because we’re living abroad. There are numerous methods that the banks employ to prevent money laundering, such as requiring us to send them two recent utility bills or them having to send a security code to a UK mobile phone. Neither of these is possible because we don’t have a house or a UK phone. To get around this we can only deal with banks where we already have an account, so we never close accounts and now have five accounts with £10.00 balances, so that we remain customers.
To make matters worse, most of the bank web sites are very hard to use and I wasted two hours of my life trying to open bank accounts and failing. As the final insult, I then spent half an hour waiting on a telephone help line with Santander before giving up. Thank goodness for Skype – at least it only cost £1.00. Goodness knows how much it would have cost on a mobile phone.
We cracked up in the afternoon and went for a walk ashore. Deshaies is a small fishing town that now has several diving shops and lots of restaurants. We managed to get a fresh baguette, so we had Moules Meunieres, Pain and Vin Rouge for dinner. It was raining and very windy, so we ate down below and watched TV for the first time in over six months.
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