We had an early start on the 2nd March waved farewell to Sunshine II and Moondance and set sails to pass Dominica via the East coast and sail the 70 miles to Marie Gallant a small island East of Guadeloupe which we missed on our last visit here.  They say that by the time Columbus sailed into Marie Galante he had run out of Saint’s names so he named this island after one of his boats.

We meet up with Just Imagine who have their friend Christine onboard. since we haven’t visited here before we hire a car and do a tour, it is small enough to do in one day.  We saw sugarcane which is mostly exported or turned into the ‘rum agricole’ which is a particularly volatile French rum, they sell it by the 3ltr boxes here and it tells you something when we didn’t buy one!  A pretty Island, very French and unlike the normal Caribbean Islands as it is flat with no rain forest and quite prosperous, thanks in part to the signs ‘sponsored by the European Community” maybe?

Snorkeling not up to much until we went to Vieux where we launched the Canoe (first this year) and paddled out to a mall island in the Bay where the coral, fans and rock formation were quite spectacular.  x