25 Jan 2018

25/1/17 : Relaxing in Les Saintes

We had an interesting sail down to Guadeloupe at the end of last week when the depth guage suddenly started registering values despite us being in over 800m of water (it goes blank once the sea bed is over 200m below us). For between 5 & 10 minutes it started displaying depths ranging from 5.5 to 10.5m rather suggesting something was swimming along below us at the same speed, gently rising and falling as it swam along. It was a strange feeling: we looked over the side but couldn't see anything. Could it be a shoal of fish? Pod of dolphins? Whale? We'll never know as the depth guage suddenly went blank again and remained that way until we were approaching Guadeloupe and entering shallower water. All very strange .....

After an overnight stopover in Deshaies to have dinner with friends we sailed on to Les Saintes and here we've remained for approaching a week. Paul's canny approach for securing a mooring ball in pole position paid dividends once again (he comes over in the dinghy first thing and hovers awaiting boats leaving and then grabs the best one available until I bring Tumi over) so we're tucked away in a sheltered spot whilst the majority of the bay rocks and rolls in the swell. We've spent our time here snorkeling, relaxing and socialising with a number of friends and eating fabulous baguettes and creamy brie, all washed down with a nice chilled rose ... what's not to like?!  We've even resurrected writing a novel we started 3 years ago ... over 45,000 words written to date!

There's some very windy weather forecast for the weekend so we'll head south to Martinique early tomorrow morning and ride it out in St Anne.  As with Antigua we'll be saying farewell to Les Saintes but at least have been lucky enough to spend nearly three weeks here this season.