Deshaies, Guadeloupe.                     16:18.50N  61:47.85W               

 

By mid-week seven yachts, whose crews we know, had congregated in either Falmouth or English Harbour. So we organised a party at the regular weekly alfresco dinner on the dockside in Nelson's Dockyard at the Hothothot Coffee Shop alias the Image Locker.  Normally just a breakfast, lunch and coffee place, its Wednesday evening dinners are a delightful feature of the yachties life.  The food is great, the service cheerful albeit a little haphazard and if it rains it is chaos.  We made up about 25% of the diners with our table of thirteen.  The last crew to accept promised to bring a teddybear to make up the numbers to fourteen but with the threat of rain which did not materialise the bear declined the invitation.  The management had even provided a baby chair for Teddy.  There are usually a couple of musicians but this week an impromptu group of six convened to entertain us. 

On Thursday we said our farewells, checked out with Customs and Immigration, paid all our debts and planned to set sail early on Friday morning after six weeks of great fun ashore including Christmas and New Year and great sailing in the waters around Antigua.  As we pushed off in the dinghy for the last time the outboard refused to start.  Nothing would persuade it to go, for the first time in its ten year life.  It has NEVER let us down before, but we had let our guard down and had left the oars on Oriole!   We managed to thumb a tow and then spent a fruitless hour in the gathering dark attempting to coax it into life.  We feared permanent death and could not diagnose the cause.  I telephoned the local outboard guru at 0755 the next morning. "Greg Outboard's" reputation is awesome but we had never met him.  At 0815 he roared up to Oriole in his launch, by 0830 the offending motor was in pieces and by 0900 it was reinstalled on the dinghy working perfectly.  Greg certainly lived up to his reputation and all for the princely sum of 50 Eastern Caribbean dollars (£12) .  We spent Friday giving it a good testing and after a certain amount of matrimonial debate decided to forgo the pleasures of the Calcutta Cup and this morning set sail for Guadeloupe.  After a stunning sail in perfect trade wind conditions we are anchored in Deshaies, and Chris is currently downloading the match on iPlayer. So hopefully we will shortly be watching Scotland playing England at rugby on an iPad on Oriole in the French West Indies as the sun sinks into the Caribbean Sea - isn't technology wonderful!  And Oh! with a rum punch to accompany it.

 

 

The village of Deshaies in the evening sun.

 

 

Cheers!