15:52.42N 61:35.85W

Fri, Sat & Sun, 20^th, 21^st & 22^nd Jan

We woke up on Friday morning to spot two ferries delivering lots of tourists to the quay in St Louis, since about the only activity talked about in any guide or pilot seems to be hire a scooter and go round the island, this did not bode well for the availability of machines…..   And this proved to be the case once we had launched the dinghy and managed to negotiate the usual considerate French mooring of dinghies (in the Caribbean it is deemed good form to moor your dinghy on a long painter [rope] and security wire, so that there is enough give in these arrangements to allow other dinghies to nose up to the quay.   Needless to say the French don’t always think of this and are jammed in as tight as possible, latecomers i.e. us, found it a bit of a challenge to get ashore!).

Undeterred at the complete lack of scooters, we decided to take the bus into the main town, Grand Bourg and perhaps try and get a dinghy there or at least have a mooch around.   A rather surly bus driver, who was unimpressed with Rob’s hearty slam of the door, delivered us to Grand Bourg down some very impressive roads – the French do build good roads and care for their  roadsides even on this tiny backwater of an island.   We found half a dozen scooter hire stalls set up by the ferry port and were able to hire from one of them.

We set off eastwards to Capesterre down a road running along by the sea.   Rob clearly reliving all those happy far off days of owning a motorbike was disturbed to be riding a rather light vehicle with no gears and a rather lumpen wife on the back.   Sarah spent the whole day thinking how stupid we should look if we came off, dressed so sensibly in shorts, T shirts and sandals – although we were wearing nice, sweaty hired helmets.

As we neared Capesterre the beaches became even more impressive and were protected by a reef.    As per Doyles’ suggestion, Sarah went in for a snorkel but was disappointed to only discover a huge cache of empty wine bottles and not the promised reef extravaganza.   We then had a great lunch of crepes at a gaily coloured restaurant on the beach run by three French women and one of their daughters was the chanteuse.

Having navigated our way round the one-way system in Capesterre (each of the tiny settlements seems to have one-way systems despite hardly any traffic – Rob suspects yet more EU grants!) where the only sign of life was the church undergoing major repairs, we drove up the east coast to visit Gueule Grand Gouffre .   This is a huge, round sinkhole plunging down 200 feet with an archway where the sea rushes in.   Unfortunately the photos would have been more impressive if we had visited in the morning when the easterly light would have lit the interior, even so it was quite sufficient to make Rob feel decidedly giddy as Sarah hopped around taking the shots.

After this we drove the last part of the circuit of the island, via St Louis back to Grand Bourg to deliver our scooter back.   We had a quick look at the marina where a few yachts are tied up to buoys or a basic pontoon.   All the boats looked pretty shallow draft and the pilot states it is dredged to 7’ although the chartlet says it is deeper.   It was very calm inside the marina, but the boats anchored just outside were heaving around very uncomfortably.

We had just about run out of things to do or see, so returned the scooter to the hirer who very kindly offered us a lift back to St Louis in an hour’s time, at 5pm.   This gave us long enough to discover that as soon as the ferry leaves at 4pm the whole town shuts and there is nothing to do!   The scooter man was very friendly and a very fast French driver!   We passed two people stood driving a huge oxen drawn cart and he screeched to a halt to enable us to take a photo;  at this point the cart driver took exception to the photo-shoot and whipped the two oxen into a canter.  Our driver was absolutely delighted by this response – we were rather horrified and abashed.

We had intended to stay another day, but the anchorage is so rolly – perhaps if we had crept a bit farther into the NE corner of the bay it would have been better – we decided to set off for Isles des Saintes early on Saturday morning.   Moonbeam had told us that this season, compulsory buoys have been laid throughout the anchorages there, so we hoped to find a buoy behind Ilet a Cabrit, although we are aware there are only a few in this nice sheltered spot.

We have enjoyed Marie Galante and felt it was a worthwhile excursion up wind to visit another completely different island but would not feel drawn to repeat the experience again.   It is definitely one to visit in calm conditions, which, technically for the Caribbean, we had been undergoing.

We left the anchorage at 0645 but with the wind dead astern we only set the main to steady the boat and motored over to the Saintes.   There was a most confused sea with a mixture of Atlantic rollers and other waves from both north and south of Marie Galante as far as we could work out.   The wind got up to force 5 by the time we arrived three hours later but luckily we  saw few fishing traps after last year’s encounter, but there were loads of flying fish.   The increased wind and sea decided us that it would be more comfortable behind Ilet a Cabrit although it does mean a long bouncy dinghy ride to town and the wifi.   And we were lucky enough to find a free buoy which we hooked up successfully with our Duck Hook and relatively little bickering considering this is the first time we have picked up a buoy since 2006 in the river Helford in the previous Serafina!

Rob then shot off in the dinghy to check our emails and Sarah finally got down to the job of pumping up the fenders to capacity and covering them with the FenderSock purchased two years ago.   The theory is that the extremely small cable ties can be induced to encircle the fender and secure the material.   In practice it had taken two hours and very sore fingers to complete the first one at the beginning of the season.   Sarah has now worked out that using one cable tie on the bottom of the fender and completing the job with cord around the top is the solution.

Otherwise the rest of the day was split between wishing we had brought a hunting rifle with us to shoot the neighbouring yappy dog and watching a huge motor vessel devote the whole afternoon to failing to anchor in three different locations and finally getting shooed off by a hooting from an enormous yacht the MV was getting too close to.   Eventually he turned tail as the sun was setting, and motored off to Guadeloupe – no doubt with some rather irritated owners/clients!

Sunday was spent doing lots of postponed jobs and feeling very sanctimonious!  We have finally set up the Anchor Rescue system and should we ever have to use it, will let you know its efficacy.   But we both feel happier having it if it could potentially save our lovely Rocna anchor.  This anchorage is quite entertaining with  lots of coming and going of yachts and motor boats, particularly those that seem to come over from Guadeloupe for the day and the endless spinning on the mooring buoys that all yachts perform here.   At any time of the day there are boats a few metres apart facing each other – obviously not as exciting as if they were at anchor and on different length warps, as happened last year.   Sarah did  not enjoy this aspect so much when she went for an energetic swim upwind to the reef area to admire the fish, expecting a nice downwind return trip to discover the wind was blowing heftily the other way….

We also watched the spectacular yacht in the opposite bay set off to Guadeloupe under reefed mizzen and two headsails.   According to AIS, it was doing 14.5 knots but then it was also 207 feet long!