Commodore
September 23, 2022

Off to Guadeloupe

Troy the guy fixing the crack in the roof, arrived at 6:30am to finish the job. He had put the epoxy in yesterday and came to cover it with gel coat today. He joined us for a cooked breakfast and worked hard with his gel coating to get it all sorted before our departure. We discovered he is actually from Dominica, but couldn’t get any work there so came to Antigua. Tommo also put in an appearance. By 9am we were all prepared to go, Rowan was itching to get going. We had just unhitched the last of the 3 ropes attached to bollards on the dock, when Rowan heard a warning message coming from one of the engines, and it would not start. Panicking like crazy we just managed to get a line back to the dock and got ourselves securely tied back on. Rowan called the crowd who had serviced the engines last week. Luckily once Rowan told them we were all checked out of Antigua, they agreed to come promptly. After a lot of toing and froing, with laptops and computer updates, Rowan found an explanation for the error code on the internet. Basically it was a warning telling us we had done 250 miles and needed to update the system after the service. What a nonsense, but at least the engine was fine.

Midday we finally set off, we were waved goodbye by Thula (the S African lady married to the American) as we left the bay. We had good winds leaving and got the sails up no problem. Rowan was ecstatic to be sailing again, and enjoying the fact that we were averaging 10 knots of boat speed in mid teens wind, and most importantly we were overtaking some big monohulls! The waves were big and choppy and there were plenty of dark threatening clouds about. We left Falmouth at 12 and got to Deshaies in Guadeloupe around 4pm.

Thula took this photos of us leaving Falmouth Bay

Deshaies was a very quaint little bay, we were horrified by the amount of boats, not much space for us getting in, and the wind was howling. We had a few attempts at anchoring, various attempts aborted as we swung too close to other boats or getting too close to land. We finally got a good hold which was the most important thing, with plenty of room all around us.

Just before Deshaies, dark clouds gathering

Loads of boats in Deshaies

Very cute little town with the cemetery on the side of the hill

It is a very quaint little place. We dinghied into the town to check in, which thankfully the guide book told us about this wonderful little shop called Pelican that can process all the forms for getting in. All done online and a lot easier than the Customs and Immigration office in Antigua. We had a good wonder around the town, famous in the Uk as the setting for a tv series called Death in Paradise. Actually we were amazed at how touristy the place was, it is obviously very popular with French holiday makers.

The canal

Pretty balconies everywhere

Hannah will be pleased to see this boat

We were not very confident about our anchorage so we went back to PolePole and had a delicious salad back on board, for supper. We had a lovely sunset and then were rather alarmed to see night divers with powerful lights swimming around – poor old fish and crayfish do not have much of a sporting chance here!