Despite having had a bit much to drink and (for a boatie) a late night I woke up early. One of the crew from the Peter von Danzig had asked if he could look at my boat and we’d made rough plans to call at 10AM on the VHF, as both of us have DSC radios we could do without having to use the standard VHF CH16 hailing frequency. But I had a long trip to Guadeloupe and didn’t know what the conditions would be like, so I prepared the dinghy for the passage by removing everything in it and placing it into my garage, then weighed anchor and motored to the outer anchorage at English Harbour, which was in sight of their boat and to which they could dinghy to visit. Unfortunately, this outer anchorage was very full and I couldn’t find a place to set anchor temporarily that wasn’t either almost awash on the reef or would have me in the relatively narrow deepwater channel to the docks. I soon gave up and set sail for Guadeloupe at about 09:30AM and planned on hailing them on the VHF but completely forgot about it until I was halfway to Guadeloupe and out of range!
The passage was very boisterous, the seas were certainly more than the 2 meter swell that I’d expected and the winds were 15-20 for most of the passage from abeam, picking up towards the end so that I had to reef my genoa (the mainsail was already reefed). Entering Deshaies I saw that all the nice anchoring spots closer in and in shallow water had been taken and there was an Alubat Ovni (aluminum, shallow draft) cruiser turning away with anchor hanging down as I approached. I shouted across if I could anchor there and the skipper shouted back that he’d had 3 attempts with no luck in that spot. I decided to risk it anyway and dropped anchor in over 40 feet. Luckily my anchor held and I paid out 150+ feet of chain in winds that were really gusting in the anchorage. Within a half hour the wind had died to nothing and the waters were relatively calm despite my anchoring so far from shore.
I had to wait until 16:30 to clear in, as the coffee shop Le Pelican in which one can clear in has a relatively long lunch break but once ashore the clearance procedure was, as it is in all the French islands, quick and relatively painless if one ignores the issues with the jumbled-up keys on the French keyboard. I purchased 2 fresh baguettes, only one of which survived the trip on the dinghy back to the boat as I was feeling rather peckish. The remaining baguette formed the backbone of my garlic buttered bread and pasta dinner. I finished the whole baguette and only had a bit of the pasta, the remains were given to the local fish population.
 |  |  |  |
 |
 |