Back to France!
After a few days waiting for better weather we are finally
off south. We plan to dive and or snorkel the Jacques Cousteau reserve in
Guadeloupe and then dive the wrecks in St Pierre in Martinique.
As usual we have an early morning start and in the company
of ‘Vivace’ we are off to Deshaies. The wind is a little south of east and at
about a F5 we are making good time. About the half way mark we spot a small pod
of what we thought were dolphins. They seem very large for dolphins so we spend
a good half an hour studying the book to try to identify our cetacean sighting.
It is always the way, you spend more time studying the book than you do
watching the live action! Eventually we conclude that they were short finned
pilot whales (we think!)
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| Pilot whale |
Up ahead we can see another yacht, for once we are gaining
on it, we are not the slowest or smallest out today, as we get closer we see it
is ‘Horizons’, the wind is getting stronger as we can see there is a squall up
ahead. ‘Horizons’, a 30ft catamaran, had left from Falmouth harbour in Antigua and are also bound
for Deshaies, pointing higher in the gusts we easily sail to windward of them
and leave them in our wake. We arrive in Deshaies at about 1530 and anchor in a
flat calm anchorage. Compared to earlier in the season the bay is fairly empty.
We spend a day in Deshaies after checking in as it is a
really lovely town and we like it here. On the Friday morning we plan to go to
Pigeon Island and snorkel in the marine reserve. Friday morning we wake to no
wind so we motor the 9 miles to Pigeon Island. By the time we have arrived the
wind has arrived too. We pick up one of the yellow yacht moorings off the
islands.
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| Our mooring in the reserve |
We are very close to the shore with barely enough swinging room with
the rocks just behind us. Another yacht arrives behind us and tries to pick up
the mooring alongside us; there is no room to arrive upwind so a downwind
approach is the only way.
The next 10 minutes can only be described as pure farce, it
was very fortunate that it didn’t end in disaster. First, going too fast the
yacht overshot the mooring buoy and headed into the gap between the two
islands! Next, the crew now at the stern with the mooring rope threw it at the
buoy! With this rope in the water they go astern only to catch this rope around
the prop! Panic ensues as another member of the crew tries to swim to the buoy
with another rope (which is too short) while they launch the dinghy to try to
drag the yacht backwards to keep it from being blown ashore. Eventually the
swimming crew is given a longer rope and manages to tie the stern off on the
buoy. All that remains is to free the rope attached to the prop. This is
achieved by cutting it and it parts with a loud “twang”! With engines in astern
they motor backwards and attach the bow to the mooring buoy. While all this is
going on there are divers surfacing from their dive and a dive boat circling
around trying to pick the divers up! Disaster is narrowly avoided! We could not go and help as we had not yet lowered the engine onto the dinghy.
After all this excitement they abandon any idea of going
snorkelling and go and anchor near the mainland side of the bay. Later they
came back by dinghy!
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| Peacock flounder |
The action under the water is every bit as good as the
excitement above.
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| Smooth Trunkfish |
The marine reserve really makes a difference (no fishing) as
there are many more mature fish here than anywhere else we have snorkelled.
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| Pudding wife |
The water is very clear and there are lovely
coral formations.We spend the afternoon snorkelling and then move to the
mainland side of the bay for the night. We plan to be off to Dominica in the
morning.
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| A slow sail down Guadeloupe |
As usual there is little wind down the western side of
Guadeloupe so we are motoring, we are confident there will be wind as soon as
we reach the bottom of the island.
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| Our own beer from Guadeloupe! |
We are not disappointed and are met with a
good F4 from the east. Unfortunately we are also met with a couple of heavy
rain squalls as well. The breeze only lasts until we get to Dominica and dies
as we approach the point on our way into Prince Rupert Bay. We are met by Martin
(Providence); he is out fishing for the afternoon with his family. When he
realises who we are he calls out to us “Welcome back”! It is nice to be back
but we will only stop the night as we want to dive in Martinique. We anchor in
front of the PAYS event house on the beach, close by is ‘Compass Rose’. Again,
there are far fewer boats here than in March. Alexis stops by and greets us
with “Welcome home”! This is a lovely spot but we are on a mission so we will
not be here for the Sunday night beach BBQ, much to the disappointment of the
‘boat boys’.
We decide to go ashore (even though we have not checked in)
and try to have supper in the ‘Blue Bay’, we order a drink and the barmaid says
she is going home and closing (so much for supper!) Fortunately it is PAYS to
the rescue and we end up in the ‘Purple Turtle’- a PAYS business. The menu is
somewhat limited as there are only 2 portions of Chicken, but plenty of fish
and burgers in the freezer. Between the crews of ‘Galene’, ‘Vivace’, and ‘Emma
Louise’, we all manage to get something to eat (and several beers!)
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Tomorrow we will go to Roseau, it is 24 miles and true to
form we motor all the way. We are met in the bay by ‘Pancho’, who offers us a
mooring by the Anchorage Hotel. At US$10
a night it is really the only option as anchoring is almost impossible in the
deep water off the hotel. The guide book says that if you buy a drink at the
hotel you can use their pool. What a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon,
drinking beer lounging by a swimming pool in the Caribbean! You would think we
were on holiday! Unfortunately there is some confusion between the bar staff
and hotel management - management want to charge us EC$15 each to swim in the
pool. This only comes to light after we had already dived in. Ok, no problem we
will just get out then. I don’t think that was the response they really wanted.
So no swim, just a quick dip and we lounge in the chairs drinking cold beer; I
suppose we cannot have everything! Tomorrow it is back to ‘work’ as we will
sail to Martinique and our planned dives on the wrecks in St Pierre.
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| St Pierre waterfront |
The wind south of Roseau really blows hard and today was no
exception. Well reefed down we scream across the gap between Dominica and
Martinique, wind F5+ seas moderate to rough, things calm down in the lee of
Martinique and we have to motor, but the wind picks up again as we near St
Pierre, backing to the NE we sail right into the bay and anchor just north of
the pier alongside ‘Vivace’.
We plan to spend a
few days here, diving and maybe explore the island by car. With the
Emancipation day carnival on the Thursday, we have hired a car for an island
tour on the Friday, Saturday there is a ‘Big Band’ concert in the market
square, so we will spend some time exploring ashore.
Before we dive we want to see if we could get our dive
cylinders filled. No dice at Papa D’lo, we are destined to only have one dive
as we cannot get our cylinders filled. The dive shop is very cagy about diving
the wrecks and we gather they want you to dive with them, which is not what we
want. We know the wrecks are marked with large buoys in the bay, they are all
at 30+ metres deep but we will tie off on the buoy with our dinghy and go and
see what we can see.
Our first dive is disappointing as the visibility is about 15m;
the wreck is on the sea bed at 30m with odd bits of wreckage around the outline
in the sand. Not a lot to see – a huge anemone on a box and a few wrasse and
lion fish. Dave from ‘Vivace’ who is diving with us is newly qualified and can
only dive to 20m so it is not a good dive for him either. We abort the dive so
as not to waste our air and look for another site. Getting into the dinghy Rowena
managed to drop her weight belt – oops! Fortunately we both have plenty of air,
so leaving Dave at the surface, Rowena borrows Dave’s weight belt and we do a
quick ‘bounce’ to 40m to retrieve it. We
find it easily, as it is a flat sandy bottom, but we both have to hang on to it
and put a bit of air in our BCs to get back up.
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| Lots of Lobsters |
Technical diving over we look for another site, having
watched where the dive boat goes we pick up another mooring, this wreck is
called the ‘Italian Yacht’. The dive does not disappoint, lots of life,
turtles, lobsters, soap fish, eels, mutton snappers and interesting bits of
wreckage to look at. We also see several
lion fish on both wrecks, there seem to be more in the French islands, maybe
they just do not do anything about them. At 18m we dive for 22minutes until
Dave is out of air. We need to come back and dive the other sites but first we
need to find out where we can get our cylinders refilled.
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| The Parade |
We spend the afternoon ashore at the carnival. There are
dozens of stalls with traditional handicrafts, tropical flowers and local food.
We watch the parade and stay for some of the live band and go back to the boat
to watch the fireworks.
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| Church at Fond St Denis |
Friday is our day with the car. We head across the island
through the rainforest.
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| Tree ferns in the Forest |
The pretty villages in the mountains remind us of
Switzerland, they are very neat as well. Each village seems to have a huge
church with mainly small houses.
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| Tropical flowers in Stained glass |
In this area, they each have their own
memorial to their villagers who died in the volcanic eruption of 1902. We
finally arrive at Mont Pelee, the volcano. You can walk almost to the top but
today as we walk to the viewing point we are shrouded in mist and rain so
decide against it.
Driving through farmland and miles of banana plantations and
sugar cane we see a sign to the banana museum - maybe not!
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| Atlantic coast of Martinique |
The Atlantic side is a real contrast to the Caribbean coast.
It is much more rugged, with a fringing reef and offshore islands. I suppose
you could cruise there as there are a couple of harbours but it is very exposed
to the trade winds although the reefs keep most of the waves away.
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| Rum Museum |
For the full cultural tour you have to visit a rum
distillery! We went to the St James distillery that has been making rum from
almost the beginning of the colonial times, the first distillery being started
by Dominican monks in 1660. Until I
visited the distillery we never realised the difference between the French and
English style rums. The Rhum Agricole in the French islands is made by
distilling sugar cane syrup, it is generally white and the dark rums get their
colour and flavour from aging in oak casks. The traditional dark English Rums
are made not from cane syrup, which was used to make sugar but from molasses
(the caramelized sugar residue) this produces the difference in taste. A walk round the museum followed by a
sampling led to the purchase of 3 bottles, the Vieux Rhum (old) the Amber
(matured in oak barrels to give its’ colour) and a Coconut Rhum (white rum with
coconut juice)
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| Mending Nets Case Pilote |
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| Town Square Case Pilote |
Our island tour concluded with a visit Carbet bay where it
is believed Columbus first landed and a drive past the house where Paul Gaugin (the
artist) lived. The house is a museum and gallery but unfortunately was closed
for renovation. Maybe next year it will be open.
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Columbus Hotel, did he really stay here? |
The Saturday evening free concert was excellent, a mixture
of Jazz, Swing and Latin rhythms. We were surprised that hardly anyone was
dancing, on the former British islands as soon as the music starts people start
swaying and dancing, maybe a bit of French reserve? Finally as the band was completing
their encore a few people got up and danced.
‘Vivace’ who have been our companions for several weeks now,
are keen to move on but we decided to stay another day in St Pierre, it was
good that we did as we found a very obliging dive shop that would fill our
cylinders, it is called Surcouf and is on the south side of the beach near the
Esso filling station. We just beached the dingy and carried the cylinders up.
At this time of year everyone is moving south, many of the
boats we know here are going to Fort de France, the capital. We will go to the
Anse’s d’Arlet and enjoy the snorkelling there.
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| Fishing Boat Petit Anse |
Grand Anse we know is a sleepy
hollow, but the bottom is lovely, sandy with outcrops of colourful sponge and
coral and all the attendant fishlife. We spend part of an afternoon cleaning
Galenes bottom with the scuba gear and the rest of the afternoon trying to get
rid of all the minute shrimps that have crept into every crevice of out gear.
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| Petit Anse |
Next day we discover Petit Anse is even quieter. For some
unknown reason both anchorages were rolly so we got ourselves tucked in at Anse Chaudiere in the southern corner of Petit Anse. Totally
calm with almost no wind.
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| French Grunts (of course!) and Black Bar Soldierfish |
The snorkelling here is very good, we snorkelled the rocks
off the jetty by the beach and also the rocks along the shoreline in Anse
Chaudiere.
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| School of White Mullet |
We saw many new creatures
here including a lesser elecrtric ray, an octopus, rock hind, spotted snake eel
(in fact, we saw 4 different eels on one dive!) different sea cucumbers and
pufferfish as well as all the usual reef fish.
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| Spotted Moray |
We swam in schools of mullet,
sergeant majors and ballyhoos as well.
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| Lesser Electric ray |
Interestingly the café in Grand Anse where you used to be
able to clear customs no longer has a terminal as it had changed hands, but now
you can clear in Petit Anse at the internet services (Cyberbase) on the front
street. We also discovered a lovely
bakery one street back.
Cleared out we are heading for St Lucia. This will be our
final stop in the Eastern Caribbean this year. We will get some of our jobs
done here before we go to Bonaire for the summer.
