We spent some days in the Marina Bas du Fort on Guadeloupe and waited for my mother to arrive. The day after she arrived we rented a car and explored the western part of the butterfly shaped island, which is called Basse-Terre. We saw some waterfalls and stopped at the Pigeon Islands for coffee and some coconut sorbet. On the way back through the rainforest it was raining heavily.
One day later we left for Marie Galante, a small island southeast of Guadeloupe. Contrary to the weather forcast, the wind increased to 30 knots and we had several squalls. My mother had no experience sailing on the ocean and got very seasick. When we arrived at the anchorage after about 4 hours there was still some swell. On the next day we went to land by dinghy. Unfortunately the weather was still very bad and we had to hide from the rain about every 10 minutes. The following day we had better weather and went to a nice beach and a cozy beach bar for the sunset.
Then we decided to check out the Isles des Saintes, a couple of small islands west of Marie Galante. As the anchorages there are very crowded we had a hard time to find a good spot. In the end we prolonged our chain so that we were able to anchor a little bit more outside. In the daytime the village Terre de Haut was full of tourists but still quite pretty. I went for a run up to the fort Napoleon, where I had a beautiful view of the bay. The other day we found a quiet beach on the nortern side of the island where we went snorkeling.
After 3 days we wanted to make some way to the north in direction to Antigua and take a stop at Deshaies at the west side of Guadeloupe. We had a pleasant sail with nearly no waves and good steady 15-20 knots from the East until the wind suddenly came from the West rather than the East and messed up our schedule. In order to still arrive before sunset we changed our plans and went to the anchorage at the plage de Malendure, behind the Pigeon Islands, the beach we have already been to with the car one week earlier. We had to anchor quite close to some other boats. At about 5 in the night we were woken by a loud sound, which made us rush outside. The boat behind us has hit Mila’s starboard rear corner while getting up the anchor. The good thing was that only a piece of metal protecting the corner got dented. The next day we decided we should check out the underwater life of the famous Jaques Custeau diving spot. So we went over to Pigeon island with dinghy and paddleboard and tied them up on one of the buoys next to the reefs. The snorkeling there was really astonishing with colourful fish and big corals. It was just a little bit annoying that there were so many people diving there.
The next day we only sailed 11 nautical miles to Deshaies, where we mainly went in order to clear out of Guadeloupe. The day we arrived we saw some dolphins in the bay, swimming very close between the boats!
When we wanted to leave for Antigua two days later the wind was gusting up in the bay so we had to wait a while before we could lift up the anchor. As a result of that we arrived in Freemans bay in the dark. Luckily there were two leading lights on shore to guide us in. When we got up the next morning we found ourselves in a beautiful and very protected bay with an amazing watercolour and a funny boat with zebra stripes next to us. Lukas requested to stay there for at least a week to relax for a bit and to recover from his cold. The bay is a part of English Harbour, which the british navy used as a hurricane hole in the 18th century. As soon as I finished clearing in (quite time consuming and complicated here compared to the other islands) my mother and me visited the museum of Nelsons Dockyard, walked over to Folsom Bay and to Pigeon Beach. The next day she took a taxi to the airport at the northern part of the island. Lukas and me spend some days doing boat projects like cleaning up all the spillages we ignored for the last days, removing algies from Mila’s hull and repairing the toilet. Also we found our favourite bar of Antigua, the Lime Lounge. The owner and one or two other musicians played live music almost every night. One night Lukas jammed with them. We went for a nice walk on the the rocky costline next to the bay and I rode the foldable bike to Carlisle bay, not knowing before that there was a big mountain in between English Harbour and there.
After nine days we set sail to Jolly Harbour. On the way we were struck by the super clear water, we could see the ground of the ocean at 14 meters!
In Jolly Harbour there is one of the only big supermarkets of Antigua, it was nice to be able to get everything we needed again, although the prices were quite high. We took a minivan to Saint Johns, the capital of the island. We didn’t like it there too much. A big part of the city consisted of a duty free shopping mall for the passengers of the cruise ships and the other part was mainly quite run down.
Funnily we ran into Manu and Stian from Mira Polaris in the the Jolly Harbour supermarket. We already met them in Mindelo and then coincidentally in Martinique. They were planning to go to a bay a little bit to the north called Deep Bay, because there was a great spot for snorkeling at a wreck. We decided to join them. And Deep Bay turned out to be a very pleasant anchorage with only a couple of other boats. We went snorkeling and had a nice barbecue/bonfire at the beach. As we almost had no water left and there was no place to leave our garbage we left for St. Martin some days later.
It was the first over night sail after a while. St. Martin or Sint Maarten is a peculiar island because it has a French part and a Dutch part. We were told it was much more convenient to clear in at the French side. So we dropped our anchor in Marigot bay on the French side and planned to go into the lagoon after two days and anchor somewhere close to the Dutch side. Now we have been here about one week and still didn’t go into the lagoon. The bridge opening times don’t match with our shedule. But we did visit the famous Maho beach, right next to the Princess Juliana Airport. A good beach for us because Lukas normally gets bored on the beach very fast, but not if he can watch the constantly starting or landing airplanes. The motto of St. Martin is “The friendly island” and we must say that St. Martin people really are super friendly. One day we were carrying our groceries on the side of the street and a friendly lady with a pickup drove us back to our dinghy. Later at night when we were on our way back from partying, an other friendly lady also drove us to where we left our dinghy. Speaking of dinghys, we finally picked up our new dinghy now! We are super happy to get to places without being completely soaked. Still working on the planing with the two of us in the boat though. The outboard is not accelerating enough, so we might have to buy a different propeller.
We want to stay in St Martin for a bit longer and maybe lift Mila out of the water to repaint her antifouling, which is already very worn off. Once that is done, we will get going for Panama. Oh, and we have to fix our toilet… again.