Position: 15:52:19N 61:35:08W

A 20 mile sail north from Dominica took us to the small French islands of Iles Saintes, off Guadeloupe.  These are a picture-perfect group of islands with a fairly sheltered stretch of water between them.  Ashore, the houses have a Mediterranean feel to them, and the whole image is one of colourful, sunny luxury.

Anchoring in wi-fi range of the main town (bugger the holding, we need connectivity!!), we dinghied ashore and found that despite the Guadeloupe strikes, many of the shops and cafes were open.  This is France in the Tropics, and I would love to see it at full non-strike strength.  Naturellement, no matter how bad the strikes are, the boulangeries were still churning out the baguettes and whilst the supermarket shelves were pretty-much bare, we did manage to find a jar or two of Bonne Maman confiture fraise to spread on our baguettes.  So you can keep your strikes for all I care – we can survive on bread and jam!!

Iles Saintes, Guadeloupe

We have spent the last few weeks thinking and discussing our return to the UK.  Sarah and the girls are flying back on April 12^th – this was booked before we left – to allow Emilia to start school on the 20^th.  However, we still had to decide on how to get the boat back – either ship her or sail her.  Whilst I don’t feel I have got anything I need to achieve, having met my transat goal of sailing over here, I do feel like I was lucky in having an “easy” sail and I would also like to complete the circuit and sail back to the UK.  I also know that if I don’t sail back I will spend the next few years saying “what if…”.  So after much deliberation, I’ve decided that I will sail Nutmeg back. 

From the outside, it probably doesn’t look like that big a decision, but for various reasons it has been one of the harder decisions to reach for me, and has taken a lot of time to reach.  First the  blurred vision, then inability to make a decision – clearly too many rum punches..  It will not be as easy a passage – a strong likelihood of bad weather – and I really didn’t want to do this one with an inexperienced crew like on the way out.  However, I’ve managed to secure the services of one chap with vast experience and this takes a lot of weight off my shoulders as it should allow me to share the responsibilities of skipper a little more and mean that I can sleep on my off-watch knowing someone is fully in control whatever the conditions.

This decision-making and planning for events 2 months hence meant that we didn’t really focus on the here and now, and consequently we didn’t pay too much attention to the forecast.  Too late for us to do anything about it, a large depression with storm-force winds had formed out in the Atlantic, and this brought strong northerly winds and a large northerly swell.  After a night anchored off the town, we moved across to Ile Cabrit, about the most sheltered anchorage in the Saintes for this wind direction.  Unfortunately it was by no means perfect, and we spent a fitful night trying to sleep by lying in the recovery position – the only position where you don’t roll about!  By dawn, a steady stream of yachts were arriving from other anchorages and tucking in near us behind the island.  Less than ideal but safe enough.

While snorkeling to check the anchor, I bumped into a mad Brit – Ed from the Contessa 32 “Blue Juice”.  He and his girlfriend Sam had sailed out from the UK on a quick jaunt to the Caribbean – they left England in mid-November, and he is sailing back in early April!  Very impressive, but we soon discovered that they are both extremely experienced sailors having both skippered Clipper yachts on the round the world race a few years back.  We spent a very enjoyable evening round at their boat and got on very well.  They are one of the few couples we have met that do not spend most of their time talking about themselves, and actually appear interested in what other people had to say!  I also took great comfort in finding that Ed’s Contessa flexes like Nutmeg does. 

We also met a lovely couple on a Bowman 36 called “Tilly Whim” – again, very understated, but have lived on their boat since 1985, and have sailed around the world.  Their boat was full of great ideas and well-thought-out systems that had clearly been tried and tested over the years.  You had to prise the amazing stories out but they had some incredible stories to tell and were fascinating.

We ended up spending four nights at Cabrit, waiting for the wind and swell to drop.  One day, Sarah made a picnic and we headed to the beach for the day, and spent an enjoyable few hours on terra firma, watching all the yachts rock and roll in the anchorage while the kids swam in the sea.  We walked up to the top of the island where there was a great view across the Saintes and North to Guadeloupe.

View from the fort at the top of Ile Cabrit towards Terre d’en Haut

After three days, we had started to run low on water (having last topped up in St Lucia) so I went on a mission in the dinghy across to the main town to fill up some jerries.  This was a very wet ride and I got drenched but was great fun and proved the worth of our dry bags for bringing back a load of baguettes!  I managed to swamp the dinghy getting it back off the beach but thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Nutmeg being checked out by the locals