One day in the Iles des Saintes before continuing onwards. The night was not good, the hull slap and corresponding pounding aft plus the rolling motion did not contribute to a good night’s rest.
I debated leaving in the morning at sunrise but decided to stay after all. Around 07:30 one of the moored boats left and I got my anchor up and my first pass to pick up the mooring was a good one, but I couldn’t lift the mooring high enough to get my line through the eye. But Uwe came by and we got Zanshin attached to the mooring. I got things ready and dinghied ashore in order clear in.
But the shop was closed, and luckily one of the people came by and let me clear in and out. Today is celebration of emancipation day in Guadeloupe and all non-tourist places (the café I’m writing this post on, restaurants, etc.) are closed.
Upon return to Zanshin I replaced the yellow “Q” flag with a French courtesy flag as regulations stipulate. Luise and Uwe came bay and said that they would pick me up at 13:00 along with Esther and Lincoln so that we can take a walk up and over the hill to the beach on the south side. I’d said it is usually empty, but considering how crowded the little beach here next to Pain de Sucre is I will assume that the other one is going to be similarly busy.
Tomorrow is a rather long passage of about 110NM and I think I’ll get going as early as possible and plan on arriving in St. Lucia late at night. But I now know the anchorage and it is very wide open and spacious so I’m not particularly worried about making landfall at night. But I certainly hope that I’ll get a better night’s sleep tonight than last night. It was only a small consolation to find out that neither couple on Cyrilla and Luwina had fared any better on their catamarans.
The five of us took the short hike from the base of the hill at the hotel dock up to the little chapel with views down to Pain de Sucre and south to the Anse Crawen. While there was still old debris from the hurricane all over the hillside, the stone ramparts and stone chapel had seemingly survived the worst of weather unscathed. From the top we then walked back down, sliding on the loose scree, and over to the beach at Anse Crawen. It was surprisingly empty with just a handful of guests, but it was also somewhat chilly with the strong onshore winds and lack of sunshine.
We returned to have some cool drinks at the hotel bar, then to Cyrilla for some Belgian-style 7% beer which hit me like a truck (which didn’t keep me from taking seconds). Luise and Uwe invited us over for a Ratattouile dinner after dark and we all repaired to our various boats in the anchorage. I was somewhat late to pick up Esther and Lincoln, having dozed off to the music of old Rolling Stones but we made it over to Luwina for a very tasty dinner indeed. All of us were more than a bit tired from the previous night’s rolling and slamming so by 21:00 we’d all returned home for the night.