farewell Antigua....bon jour Deshaies, Guadeloupe 16 18.43N 061 47.82W
Barada
Paul Downie
Fri 22 Feb 2008 20:52
We left Mosquito Cove, Jolly Harbour, at first light this morning and had a good 10 hour sail south to (French) Guadeloupe - on the way we caught our first fish on the trolling line, a wonderful TUNA, which we enjoyed for tea on arrival (with enough left for 3 more meals).
Deshaies (pronounced Day-hay) is a picturesque fishing village near the north end of the island's west coast, a well-protected bay surrounded by hills and mountains...quite crowded on our arrival at 1630 but we picked our way through the bigger yachts to anchor in 6m near to the shore. Would you believe that a turtle poked its head up near Barada's bow just as we turned the engine off?! Magic.
The diving on Cades Reef and the wreck of the Andes were fantastic experiences tho the viz wasn't so good on the latter, and so far on every dive we see a fish that we have never seen before: Blue Chromis 3", Gray Angelfish 15", a Leatherjack 12", Gray Snappers (large approx 18") and Paul saw his first Porkfish 12" a yellow grunt with 2 black vertical stripes on his head.
However the squalls keep blowing in with near continuous high winds, so we were unable to go north to Barbuda, a flat island, and felt that the other islands to the NW would be having similar weather and anchoring might not be secure enough for the diving we had planned to do.....so we decided that we had better move south for the diving in Guadeloupe. So away with the Eastern Caribbean $ and out with the Euros, or $Eu and the French phrasebook! Plus fresh croissants for breakfast mmmm :+)
Here we plan to dive in this Bay under the cliffs and further down the west coast at Cousteau Underwater Park around Pigeon Island as well as a bit of sightseeing on land and visiting some of the beautiful waterfalls, 350' Carbet Waterfalls are possibly the tallest in the Caribbean. If we find a decent Internet Cafe we will post a few pics. Goodnight to you all and sweet dreams.