We finally decided to leave Antigua on Sat morning and head 40 miles to the French island Guadeloupe. We left first thing in the morning and had a really wicked sail, averaging about 6.5 to 7 knots the whole way. Well the sail was wicked but me we got really worried about Wolverine. His heart was pounding so quickly we thought he was going to have a heart arrack. We thought it may be heat exhaustion as he is so furry, we put him in the aft cabin with a fan over him and he seemed to get better, by the time we arrived at the anchorage he was fine. We had a few patches of rain but that was cool its not like the dreaded rain back home, you kind of look forward to it to cool you down, its really refreshing. Anyway we arrive at a really nice anchorage on the north west of the island called Deshaies. The anchorage was so picturesque and the water was far better than Falmouth Harbour. We decided to stay for the weekend and leave on Monday morning.
It felt so nice to be here. It was so quiet and peaceful, especially after the last two weeks where everything is busy and it’s full up with mega rich yachts. We spent the weekend snorkelling, swimming and chilling out. The snorkelling was the highlight, we followed an Octopus around for ages and a turtle swam lesuirly past the boat. We played a few games of Scrabble where Sym stuffed me. I was not impressed, he beat me by a whole 100 points. That’s what you call a real thrashing. We rowed into town and beached our tender on the white lush sand. The town was really quaint and as you can imagine everyone spoke French – no one could understand a word of English. Can you believe here of all places we found a Spar. We got some meat and had pork chops and salad for dinner. It was quite expensive though, as everywhere seems to be these days, at the mo the pound is terrible and buys us one euro more or less.
Monday morning we went to go and do the dreaded check in with the authorities. This process usually takes hours and tends to cost a lot of dosh. Well- it was by far the best one ever, the paperwork was done in about 10 mins,( one paged form ) no questions asked and top of all entirely free. Even the water and rubbish was free. So far way better than Antigua. We left the anchorage for a short 14 mile sail around the corner to what was described as “diver’s paradise”. We dropped the hook in amazing waters and as usual jumped in the water to cool down and check anchor and saw loads of star fish.
We decided to put the engine on the tender and hop over to the small adjacent island called inlet Pigeon and do some snorkelling. Well it was the most breath taking place in the world and the variety of fish was amazing. We saw loads of puffer fish one mad box one that Sym had never seen before, we saw loads of parrot fish, gar fish , a yellow trumpet fish, stone fish an octopus and the best of all a sea turtle. Well recommended to anyone who wants to go diving in the Caribbean. As it was a popular dive site for tourists the fish were used to human contact and so not prone to legging it off. It was really cool day. We have just arrived back at the boat and had a hot shower and a beautiful dinner. We decided to stay for a few more days and chill out with the fish
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