15:34.93N 61:27.93W

Sunday 20^th, Monday 21^st and Tuesday 22^nd March

Lots of colour and excitement today as firstly Royal Clipper, a sailing cruise ship arrived and anchored in the town bay and then almost immediately afterwards an immensely colourful regatta got under way with dozens of beautifully painted boats from all around Guadeloupe competing in the annual sailing race here. The boats which are all of identical design and based on the traditional local fishing skiffs were a great spectacle as they raced around the bays accompanied by dozens of spectator boats

In the afternoon we went ashore into Bourg Des Saintes and toured the town and the waterfront where all the racing crews were winding down with a BBQ, disco and a drink or three. Sarah feels that it important to note that the winning boat by some margin was an all girl crew and from what we have read since, this is not their first win either! The town is delightful and although being Sunday and most places were shut, it was easy to see the attraction of this area. However there is just something slightly odd about the place and it seems to be more like a French ‘Greek’ island than a Caribbean island.

The bay became pretty busy during the day and as the sun set, we were a little concerned about one or two boats getting too close. However Sarah reserved her concern for the late arrival of two French catamarans one of whom was displaying a large inflatable penis and who rafted up together on the far side of the bay. Her concerns were entirely justified as it was not long before the music started and their very noisy party ran late into the night despite comments from all the other French boats moored here.

Monday dawned bright and sunny and we headed ashore around 0830 hrs mainly to do our customs clearance paperwork but also for a bit more exploration. The customs bit was pretty tedious here and when I arrived at the Mairie’s office, I found myself fourth in the queue. This afforded me plenty of time to chat to the others who were American and Canadian and I learnt quite a bit about where we are headed and a lot more about Maine and the east coast of America which is sounding more and more interesting by the minute. When it was finally my turn to do the clearance it was blissfully simple and hard to work out why we had all had to wait so long. You just have to type all the required information into the official computer (all the French West Indies are the same), but the customs officer simply watches you doing this and probably is not entertained by all the crews struggling with the French keyboard which is not the same as our ‘qwerty’ ones.

Once this was complete, Sarah and I walked up to Fort Napoleon and apart from enjoying the splendid views from this vantage point, we found the restored fort to be very interesting. There were a lot of references to the Battle of the Saintes which was an epic sea battle between the French and English (of course) and we could hear the tour guides waxing lyrical about the event so we rather assumed that this was one that we did not do too well in, but on reading up on the subject since, we see that the English won a major victory here and it seems all the more remarkable that the French give it so much credence. (This contrasts with Cartagena in Spain where we visited their naval museum which was in complete denial about the events surrounding the Armada!)

We returned to spend the afternoon back on board Serafina and were entertained for a while by the crews of the two catamarans who had now assembled on the small beach and were conducting a whole series of sporting events between themselves. There was also concern when two French ladies off a nearby boat set off in an inflatable canoe and were soon swept across the bay in the strong wind and were heading for distant trouble before one of their crew set off in a small dinghy to eventually rescue them. Finally we saw two people paddling a dinghy with a broken down engine and so I went out and towed them back to the shore.

Just before sunset the two party boats left the bay much to everyone’s relief, but in fact it was not long before it began to pour with rain which it proceeded to keep doing for hours, If only it could have done that the previous night!   In fact by morning we seemed to have had about 3” of rain and the dinghy was incredibly heavy to manoeuvre back on deck.

We headed off from The Saints around 0830 hrs and threaded our way around the reefs and through a maze of fishing buoys and back out into the 25 mile stretch of Atlantic down to Dominica. The wind blew a pretty steady 15 knots and we made fast progress ending up dropping our anchor in Prince Rupert Bay at 1145 hrs. We had a bit of difficulty last time we were here in getting the anchor to bite, but this time all went well and we got a good hold at the first attempt.

Good WiFi signal here so we were able to catch up with emails etc and Sarah continued working through the afternoon on making a new anchor snubber, which is something of a work of art this time and a big labour of love (4 splices in a 20mm 8 plait rope which has taken hours and hours).

The bay here is one of those strange places where the wind blows regardless of weather conditions. It continued to blow at 20 knots all afternoon and barely died much in the evening. We had planned a trip or two on our return here, but time is beginning to run out before we fly home to the UK for the summer in early May, so we are going to press on southwards heading for Bequia (pronounced Beckway)and the Grenadines and finally Grenada.