It took us a full day of sailing to round Basse-Terre and reach Guadeloupe’s largest city, Point-à-Pitre in Grande-Terre, which we used as a base to explore both islands by land, enjoying the pleasure of driving on the right side. This time we stayed at a marina, but we had to go through a rite of passage that every sailor dreads (or at least sailors who didn’t grow up sailing in the Mediterranean Sea): the first mediterranean mooring. With med-mooring, marinas fit more boats in a dock because you dock stern-to, separated by other boats by mere fenders. In the hard version you drop your anchor a couple boat lengths from the dock and then backup to the dock. It usually leads to a tangle of anchors that only a diver can fix. It’s good business for the divers guild. In the easy version there’s a line of buoys parallel to the dock. You first backup to the dock, passing through the line of buoys, some of the buoys on either side, one or two between the hulls; then tie to the dock; and lastly the marina boys in their dinghy tie your bows to one of those buoys. I had the easy version. And I flunked it.
In my defense I can say that I had the hard version of the easy version, because in Marina Bas-du-Fort’s fairways there’s not much more than a boat length of space between the buoys for your dock and the buoys for the dock in front (see picture above). And it was windy. And I should have listened to my first mate, who suggested to enter the fairway stern-first. Instead I decided to turn around in the fairway, trusting that I could turn Ñandú on a dime. The wind showed absolutely no respect for my dime and pushed the boat just enough towards the opposite line of buoys, which I didn’t notice until the port engine shut down with a terrifying shudder. The propeller caught the buoy’s line and we got helplessly stuck. Jean-Marc from the marina had to come with his dinghy and push us back and forth to set us free. How embarrassing. Luckily things went smoothly from there, and in the end the only thing that was damaged was my pride.
Point-à-Pitre
La Soufrière
La Sufrière is an active volcano whose last eruption occurred in 1976, and the highest peak of the Lesser Antilles (1500m/4900ft). We climbed it accompanied by one third of the entire Chilean population in Guadeloupe. It turns out that a high school classmate of Kathy lives here, and they reunited after 35 years, thanks to the magic of social networks. They do as they please with your data, but they do connect people!
A great day around Basse-Terre Island
Grande-Terre Island
Hi nephews, love your adventures!!! I wanted to remind you that an island you can see from Guadalupe is Dominica where Nicole studied for 16 months at Ross University. We got to enjoy that island …. It is another mountainous island with 365 rivers. Unfortunately it was wiped out by the last hurricane María in 2017.
Love you guys!!!
Hello Dr.! We are right now anchored 2 miles from Ross U, and were wondering whether that’s where Nicole went. We’ll report on Dominica soon. Hugs and kisses.
When are you going to listen to your first mate? She’s right 99.99 percent of the time 😉
I know, I know… that’s exactly what I told myself.
You are really making me want to leave the Bahamas and see the Caribbean!
Let’s trade place for a while, because we really miss Bahamas’ anchorages.