Goodbye Pointe a Pitre, hello Jacques Cousteau
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Thu 17 Feb 2011 00:05
|
16:05.33N
61:16.16W
Alex and I have at last shaken off the straitjacket
of lassitude and set sail once again. Pointe a Pitre, with all its scumminess,
is behind us, and we are now anchored in a bay on Guadeloupe's windless west
coast. We're on our way to the Jacques Cousteau marine park, considered to be
one of the world's top dive sites. We're hoping it'll be good for snorkelling
too, but are expecting it to be full of charter catamarans (happily jet skis and
Tilsonators are not allowed). Summer Song is just five miles south of the Old
Boy's marine reserve, but there's a stop en route at a town called Bouillante.
The guide says it is unremarkable, but easily identified from the plumes of
steam rising into the still air. It gives you the measure of the Caribbean when
a town full of bubbling fumaroles is considered 'unremarkable'. Other yottin
folk have also told us that there is unbelievable snorkelling to be had, on
account of the slightly warmer water.
Pointe-a-Pitre defintely goes down as one of the
least pleasing places we've yet been in the Caribbean. Nonetheless, or perhaps
because of this, it proved one of the most sociable. Yesterday, for example,
after a day of mending and fixing things prior to the parentos' arrival on
Monday, a chap who introuced himself as Brian motored up in his dinghy and
invited us over to his Far 58 for drinks at sunset. Momentarily surprised by the
invitation, it took us just half an hour to figure out that Brian had
spotted our Cruising Association flag, and was the fellow who had been in touch
regarding a rally of CA members being held in Guadeloupe. On Monday. Difficult
timing aside, he and his wife Sandy turned out to be a cracking pair of coves
who entertained us with tales of sailing mishap and plied us with good advice
about Cuba, the Bahamas and the US east coast. We motored over this morning
before we left PP to borrow a host of charts, pilots and sailing guides. As we
left at 11, Summer Song was visibly down by the stern, where we'd stowed all our
new paperwork - the boat library is full several times over.
The sail down was another cracker. With the wind
slightly south of east, we could head down to the island's southern tip without
having to head too close to the wind. This is doubly useful since, as well as
easier sailing, it also puts less strain on our lashed-up rigging. We reckon
there's little risk, but we're only flying the genoa at present, to reduce the
strain on the damaged lower shroud. As we turned wesr about the bottom of
the island.the wind freshened to about 20 knots, and we surfed down the hefty
swell at 7 knots plus. Our only regret was the failure, yet again, to catch a
fish. We're now trailing Graham's patented 'fish-being-eaten-by-a-squid' lure,
which should appeal to big marine predators, including tuna, wahoo and mahi-mahi
(or dolphin, as they're confusingly known locally). I took advantage of a good
fishing shop in PP to buy some new lures - a bucktail jig, which resembles
nothing more than a pheasant plume, and a brace of lifelike mullet, who swim in
a convincing fashion. The only slight concern is that the mullet are so big that
they will clearly only attract monster beasts. The jury is out as to whether a
50kg marlin would be worse than no fish at all. It's entirely possible that the
question will remain entirely academic: "Sam and Alex can't catch fish.
Discuss."
|