The Grenadines to Antigua

Off to St Lucia - We said good bye to the beautiful Grenadines at daybreak mid November. If you ever get a chance to see this part of the world grab it. This area is one of the world's hidden gems.
We sailed off on a full day (11 hour) sail past St Vincent which we were advised to skirt around due to some baddies involved in the drug industry, to Marigot Bay, half way up St Lucia. It was a beautiful sail to a beautiful cove we had visited by taxi on our way down the islands last spring and looked forward to coming in with our boat. We snugged in and were joined by a super yacht who pulled in next door. The crew were wonderful and brought us a bottle of Canadian maple syrup as a gift. As usual we did what most people do on yachts... do repairs in beautiful places. We enjoyed a few beers with a local couple Jeff & Jan Bullins, we had met in the Grenadines. They said to meet them in the sundown bar at 5:30. Jeff says if they weren't there, the sun didn't go down. They were great fun.
We sailed up island and anchored at Rodney Bay, prepared for an early next day start to the run to Martinique. When we started our departure we were greeted with an anchor that wouldn't come up. After some serious maneuvering and strain on the windlass we were able to finally get it to break the surface and discovered this large piece of coral jammed into the anchor. It took us the better part of an hour to get it off. It was a wonderful sound to hear it plop back into the water to return from whence it came.
With a desire to stop in different anchorages then the ones we visited on the way down we sailed into Le Marin on the SE corner of Martinque. It was funny listening to the immigration officer pronounce Le Marin. We had no idea what he was saying until he twisted his mouth Texas slang style and said it Anglicised with a look at us like we were from the other part of the world where there is no couth.
This is a very interesting harbour. It is huge with an unbelievable amount of sail boats. We guessed over 600 hundred. We did our usual dinghy tour around the harbour and discovered 90% of them to be local boats. This was quite rare as all the other anchorages have yachts from all over the world. We dinghied over to a neighbouring town called St Anne. Past a beautiful Club Med Resort with one of the nicest beaches we have seen. St Anne was wonderful. We did a stations of the cross hike up a Calvary Hill reproduction in unbelievable heat. Interesting but we did notice the path was growing over after the first 2 stations. We were not sure if this was from a world wide expansion of agnosticism or whether it was a lack of desire to exercise amongst the locals. We returned to our dinghy to find 3 young teens diving off the wharf and using our dinghy as a bouncing tube. I stayed to guard it and give the boys a stern look while Sharen returned to watch a local wedding in the little church at the bottom of the Calvary Hill. She is never one to miss a fashion event.
We woke the next morning to have breakfast in the cockpit as the day was beautiful. There on this large catamaran next door were the husband and wife scrubbing their boat without a stitch on. Sharen made me switch sides. I was not sure if she did not want me to see or whether she wanted to. The boat's name was "Free To Be". It was a long breakfast. We left shortly after for Fort De France and they both stood there waving away... (their hands.)

We sailed past Diamond Rock, a small steep knoll 1/2 mile off the SW coast of Martinique. This has one of the great stories of the Caribbean. The English manned this uncivilized place during their war with France. Every time the French came near the English sent off the cannon balls. Napoleon was extremely frustrated on hearing about this embarrassment in the homeland of his beloved Josephine. This triggered his future engagement with Nelson at Trafalgar. So the story goes...
We sailed into Fort De France to find no boats in the area in which the sailing guide said we could anchor. As we closed in we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by the most beautiful square rigged race boats. We backed off until their first race was completed. We then snuck in and anchored just off the shore where we had a superb view of the festivities. We found a tour guide taxi driver who could speak English. He was very good. Sharen really liked his car.
The next morning we raised anchor (no issues this time) and went north to St Pierre to where we planned to check out and head off to Dominica. We anchored off this beautiful town which was devastated by a volcano in 1903. Only 2 survivors. More great stories but.... this is getting a little long.
We went to check out but found the office closed on Mondays. What to do???? We needed a document stating that we had checked out of one country before we would be admitted into another. Should we sail all the way back south to Fort de France or just leave for Dominica and hope the Dominican customs would believe us that the French just don't care. We left before sun-up the next morning and caught the most beautiful views of the sun rising over Martinique as we headed off to Dominica.
Hey Hooo. The Customs just shook their heads and said something about the Dumb French when we checked in.
We contracted with a local Rasta Tour Guide to row us up the famous Indian River. I had seen it 3 years before with our good friend Doug Murray on our first Caribbean sail trip. I enjoyed it so much I wanted Sharen to see it. Maybe it was because the Tour Guide we had then was so into his job with lots of wonderful stories about the this being the location of Pirates of The Caribbean and the location for the Survivor Series. I was amazed to find that out of 10 plus guides on the river we ended up with the same guy. He was just as good but all new stories. When I repeated some of the ones he told us a few years before he couldn't remember them. I think he has been into his favourite ritual spiritual drug (marijauna) too much. Beautiful mangoves, fish, birds and the most interesting roots. It is a Very cool spot.
We were off again the next morning. We were on a tight schedule to get to Antigua as our daughter Nicki and husband Aaron were meeting us there for a few days. We had 20 knot winds on our trip to Les Saintes, a beautiful island group just south of Guadeloupe. We tried to check in at customs but were told their fax (which they use to send our documents to Guadeloupe) was not working so we could just ck in on the big island when we got there. We felt this was probably a lie. They just really didn't care that much. Les Saintes is a very deep anchoarge and we put out most of our chain, jumped into the dinghy and went ashore. We were hungry and anxious to have dinner in one of the islands fantastic restaurants. It was 5 oclock and time to eat. Well... not here. Nothing opened for dinner until 7 pm. This is France and that is how they do it. I convinced Sharen that we should return to the boat for a light snooze and return after 7. It was a long sail and I was pooped. She was concerned that I would not wake up. Well, she was right. I awoke at 10 pm and on getting showered, dressed and spiffed up we returned to find all the restaurants closed. We returned to the boat for some beer and peanuts. I was not popular.
Next day we were off to Guadeloupe which we were excited to see. This is one of the most developed islands in the Caribbean. After renting a car and touring almost every road, we found it delightful. Huge homes overlooking the sea and beautiful beaches on the SE side. Wonderful lunch in a small fishing village on the NE side and a fantastic drive along the NW and thru the beautiful rainforest on the mountainous central part of the western wing of the island. We enjoyed the fully developed marina area in Pointe a Petre, the main city on the island.
We wanted to experience motoring the Riverie Salee that separates the 2 wings of Guadeloupe. We anchored for the night in the shallows just before the first bridge. The draw bridge opens for boat tarffic at 5 am and the second bridge opens at 5:20 AM. It doesn't get light until 6 AM. You have to do this all in the dark. We raised anchor at 4:45 to get ready to be greeted with a tidal flow that was pushing us into the unopened bridge. Lots of wiggling and squarming trying to drive the boat backwards while pointing it front and centre. At 5 AM I laid on the fog horn to let him know it was time. He finally opened about 2 minutes later. Just in time as I was having a fit. We then powered up to the next bridge trying to remain in the centre of the channel which we could hardly make out in the dark. We finally emptied out into a large body of water which was mostly around 2 feet deep with an even tighter channel thru. This time marked by bouys that you could not see without binoculars from one to the other. We had put the way points into our electronic navigation from our guide book and followed these faithfully. We made it through without touching once. We were pleased. Other boaters we had met with a lot more experience touched several times. You also have to wonder about the French boaters. We saw several bouys marking where boats had sunk recently. Several in the river and several in the shallow bay. On top of this while motoring up to our anchorage prior to the first bridge we passed a boat towing a sunken boat with a load of survivors aboard the rescue boat. It seems these boaters could use a copy of The Safe Boating Guide.
We knew when we chose to stay the extra day so we could tour Guadeloupe that the weather was deteriorating and we would have a bumpy ride to Antigua. We both thought it would be worth it but rethought it when we were welcomed by 8 ft seas and 22 to 25 knot winds. We reefed in the main and furled the foresail and still maintained 7.5 to 8 knots. On approaching Antigua we decided to heave to and let a squall pass by in front of us. We entered Falmouth Harbour to the largest collection of super yachts we had ever seen. It was the big charter boat show and these things were "big". It was fun. Most rented for over 100,000 per week. We have no idea what the really big stuff went for.
The next day we picked Nicki & Aaron up in a car we had rented. We live in fear of being out after dark in any unknown place in third world countries and here we were out driving not only at night BUT also on the wrong side of the road. We diligently followed the map and as expected got horribly lost. However we did find wonderful locals who directed us back to our anchorage and home. Whew!!
We enjoyed having Nicki & Aaron aboard. Sharen loved getting their stateroom ready. We toured Nelson's Dockyard and attended the Sunday night party at Shirley Heights. We ventured off to a beach anchorage where we found a great swim and a beach side restaurant with cold beer. Heaven. We were delighted to have our friends Gerry and Marilyn Bolton along with their son Chris link up with us while their cruise ship was in Antigua. We enjoyed lunch at Castaways Restaurant on the beach at Jolly Harbour. We rented a golf cart and toured the various resorts. Each residence has a pool, beach and a boat dock. We left the boat at Jolly Harbour marina under the watchful eye George Bridger, a marine electrical specialist and overall handyman. We left him with a long list of stuff that needed attention.
We flew back to Edmonton for Christmas Dec 10th with Nicki & Aaron. We were anxious to see the grandkids and Richie & Becky.