Deshaies

Guadeloupe
16.18.376N
61.47.864W

What a Great Sail!

We were ready to leave Antigua at 6:45am but since we had told our neighbors that we would leave at 7, we sat in the cockpit and enjoyed the quiet morning starting to come to life. At 7am, we started the process of lifting the anchor, which can be noisy if you’re anywhere near. This was all the alarm clock our neighbors needed and came up to find us creeping slowly towards them. Sure enough, they had to start their engine and move forward a little to let us retrieve our anchor.

We motored to the entrance of the harbor, turned into the wind and unfurled the main sail to the first reefing point. We turned back toward the entrance and motored out beyond the lee of the island, unfurled the headsail and turned off the engine. We had perfect sailing conditions. The seas were down and the trades were averaging about 15-18 kts all day. The skies were blue except for a couple of white fluffy clouds over the islands. This is what sailing is all about.

At one point during our sail, Dale jumped up and started shouting about seeing a marlin jump out of the water just in front of our boat. He was all excited and said that if it had been 10 seconds later, it would have run into us it was so close. I hadn’t seen it but could tell something had caught his attention. He rummaged around for the cheat sheet on fish that we keep in the cockpit (in case he actually catches something on the line he sometimes drags behind us) and decided that it had to be a white marlin due to its sail size.

He also witnessed a flying fish crash and burn. These little fish often entertain us on long voyages when they launch out of the water and fly over the waves for extended periods of time. They manage to do this by flicking their tails on the crests of the waves to lengthen their flights before diving back into the sea. We’ve watched these little squadrons on just about every leg of our trip. Sometimes having to toss them back into the sea when they tried to fly through the cockpit but slammed into the enclosure. Today apparently, one of the little daredevils, took off, but when it came time to flick his tail on the wave, he misjudged and the wave flicked him which caused him to fly tail over gills into the water sideways.

In spite of the 1-1.5 kt current against us, we slipped into Deshaies, Guadeloupe, about 6 hours after we started, averaging about 6 kts over the course of the trip. We anchored slightly to the port side of Orpailleur and Gerry & Nicky came over to greet us. The guys talked about our various mechanical difficulties and Nicky and I talked about the horrendous crossings we each experienced the day that our paths separated.

As I mentioned before, Orpailleur had lost engine power and had to sail the rest of their trip. They, like us, were making a trip up wind which meant that they were tacking back and forth to their destination in huge seas and then once reached, had to tack back and forth to enter the harbor which was filled with anchored boats, not all of whom had their anchor lights on and the moon hadn't come up yet. They also have headsets, so with Gerry standing on the bow, Nicky sailed according to his directions and tried to keep the wind in their sails. They had quite the time, tacking back and forth among the boats that they could see and the occasional one that they couldn’t. They were able to work their way in to reach a depth of 50 feet, then let out every inch of chain that they had and prayed that they would stay put for the remainder of the night. Luckily they did.

The next day, Gerry tore apart his engine and discovered that they had a bad fuel injector. They rented a car and explored the island via the looking for parts tour. What they found was a diesel mechanic who cleaned their injector and then sold them a refurbished one. Gerry put everything back together and they were able to move to a more secure location within the harbor where we found them. They’ll just use the engine to enter and leave harbors until we can reach Martinique where we know they have a Yanmar dealer.

At least we all back together again.