18/01/03

We reluctantly bade farewell to the Saintes on Monday morning and  Robert equally reluctantly was prized from Tempo II to where he had temporarily absconded.  We are sure that the Saintes will get a return visit at some stage if for no other reason than to visit Yves Cohen who has a shop full of irresistable clothes in Caribbean colours  which he and his wife make in Brazil during the summer.  Their shop Maogony (no h)  did rather too well out of the crew of Oriole. Robert’s extravagance was a shirt with Oriole hand painted on the front sailing past a palm fringed island.  We had a brisk sail to windward up the east side of Basse Terre to Point à Pitre the capital of Guadaloupe where we negotiated the well marked big ship channel through the reefs and secured in the very efficient marina where the Route de Rhum finishes.  It is about half the price of a Solent marina and has very attentive staff to help with lines etc.  We were able to stock up with a selection of the usual mouth watering contents of an excellent French supermarché which will see us well supplied until the next motorway stop in Martinique.  We hired a car for a couple of days and did a tour of the island, which is mountainous on the west side and flat and dominated by sugar cane on the eastern side.  It would appear that the entire sugar crop is turned into rum, well it would be wouldn’t it, after all this is France.   We would have liked more time for walking in the mountains but did manage to get up to the 110 meter high Cabret waterfalls and on the way home found a lovely jungle pool fed by another waterfall where we all swam in surprisingly warm water.  Bilharzia is endemic here but not we understand in fast running water, well we hope so anyway. 

Sadly we said goodbye to Robert on Thursday who flew back to Antigua for his flight back to the UK.  He was due to meet up with Andrew who is still there, and no doubt will be celebrating Andrew’s new job as deck hand on Adela, a 140 foot schooner very actively sailed and chartered by an American owner.  She was built a few years ago by the Pendennis Shipyard in Falmouth and we have passed her under sail in the UK looking very impressive.  Andrew needless to say is over the moon.  We have been very lucky to have had one or other of the boys onboard with us since we left home in August and we have thoroughly enjoyed their company and we think they wonder how we will cope without them.  Well, time will tell, but we feel perhaps that at least some of their expertise has rubbed off from their parents!!  We extracted ourselves from the marina this morning and are currently anchored inside the little island of Gozier on the south-east side of Grand Terre, additionally protected by a reef which is keeping out the sea generated by 15-20 knots of tradewind which is blowing through the anchorage and keeping us cool.  We are planning to sail down to Dominica tomorrow which is all of 40 miles and which should be nearly a beam reach.  Dominica is high and therefore very wet so we will have to get out the umbrellas.