Les Saintes
Blue Sky's Voyage
George & Michael
Sat 26 Apr 2008 14:03
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Hello Friends
"15:52.2N 61:35.1W"
We're back in Les Saintes again and just off
to the marina in Point a Pitre to clean up the boat before the Portsmouths
arrive on Monday.
We greatly enjoyed watching the 'Classics'
in Antigua and even though the racing is some distance away, we hope you can get
an idea of how pleasant the whole thing was from this pic of G watching the
Sunday racing from under the shade of a tree on the old ruined fort overlooking
the entrance to Falmouth Harbour.
 What the race results won't tell you is that
the Sunday racing provided more than the usual amount of entertainment. The
Sunday race is 'the cannonball' just straight out towards Guadeloupe for about 6
miles and then back, then out & back again. This makes it a nice easy broad
reach for a Sunday race. The thing is, that most of the boats, well the first
three quarters to start, assumed that the mark was in the same position as the
previous day's race... which it was not! Sitting high on our fort with our 12x
stabilised binoculars we could see the racing mark easily and were amused to
notice that the boats were heading off about 30 degrees upwind of where they
should be. The Committee boat (motor boat to left of G in photo) had
clearly noticed their mistake and broadcast the coordinates of the mark at least
six times, virtually laughing towards the end. But it's amazing what sheep the
racers can be, determined to follow the guy in front. Only about 2 boats has the
self confidence to sail in the direction they thought correct. One boat
even asked if the Committee could confirm that the mark had gone adrift - how we
laughed !!
There has to be a moral in here somewhere
about trusting your own judgement and not following the herd.
Our sail south to Guadeloupe was marked by
plenty of fish, none landed. Our first disaster was something Big! We wind the
trolling lines around the spinnaker winches and I was leaning against one when
the line tightened and the winch creaked - then the dyneema line snapped - all
in a couple of seconds, But to make the winch creak it must have been a big
fish. Later on we caught a small shark - maybe 3 feet long - but it swam
under the boat and managed to free itself before we could land it. So once again
it's frozen fish fingers for us!!
Yesterday however, our disappointment was
mitigated by seeing a family of whales playing in the channel between Guadeloupe
and Les Saintes. They were several miles away but the big ones were at least 20
metres - they were leaping up in the air and crashing down with a huge splash,
just like in the nature programs on TV !! We hope we see them again next week
when the Portsmouths come to sail with us.
That's it for now, a report of the
Portsmouth's holiday will follow in a couple of weeks.
Best Wishes
George & Michael
PS. the website is being reorganised so the
index isn't quite right yet, but "Cook Along with George" is now up there
somewhere - enjoy!
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