Guadeloupe

An impressive mural on the side of a truck in Deshais.

Guadeloupe is another French island, which means more great bread and chocolate croissants. Deshaies was our first stop and most people do not speak English. We got to practice our French and the locals got to try to figure out what we were talking about.

We had a fairly miserable ride over from Montserrat. Once again we had too much wind, too far forward and big seas.  During the early part of the sail, we discovered that one of our water hoses had come lose and our pump had dutifully discharged 80 gallons of fresh water into the engine compartment. The bilge pump then dumped it into the sea. At least we know the bilge pump is working. This meant that we were now out of water (except for the 5 gallons we kept in a jerry jug on board). Also, the starboard engine got air in the line and conked out twice, once while anchoring. It's amazing how you can get used to anything. What used to cause a bit of a panic is now almost routine.

We tried to sail but with the wind almost on the nose and a strong current against us, we weren't making very good progress. We motor sailed with one engine for awhile. There were squalls popping up that would give us big bursts of wind (from the wrong direction). When we saw 40 knots of true wind (in the midst of big seas), we decided to take in the headsail, turn on the other motor, and get to our destination without unnecessarily stressing our rigging. Hopefully most of our trips from this point on should be at a better wind angle.

After fixing the water issue and replenishing our port tank, Matt got some baguettes and chocolate croissants. We walked around Deshaies and, inspired by a crewmember on a fellow cruising boat, foraged for coconut and mango. As it turned out, we didn't need to tromp around the jungle for an hour: As we sat outside the grocery store waiting for it to reopen after the lunch break, mangoes kept dropping to the ground all around us. They were deliciously sweet and juicy. We also tried breadfruit, which is apparently the solution to a lot of the world's hunger (each tree produces about a bazillion pounds of fruit). The only problem is that most people don't care for it. We fried it and it was okay (anything fried and all that) but a little too sweet because we let it get really ripe.

Pretty but vicious. This Tetrio Sphynx caterpillar
kept lunging at Matt's hand to try to bite it.

We also spent some time near Pigeon Island and Plage de Malendure (a beach). This was one of the first places that Matt snorkeled when he was a kid and he remembered it being better back then. Mark and Conrad endured another hike and enjoyed the big surf at the beach.

We spent about a week in Guadeloupe. It has a very European feel to it, including the siren cadences, pay porta-potties and mid-afternoon closing of most business.

Le Bourg (the town), Terre-de-Haute (the island), Les Saintes
(the group of islands), Guadeloupe