Pigeon Island,
Guadeloupe
16.10.366N
61.46.789W

What time is it anyway?

In spite of the fact that Nicky likes to ease into the morning the way that I do, Orpailleur took off bright and early this morning. We fell in behind, passed the fisherman casting their nets in the early morning light and followed them to our predestined site of Pigeon Island where the Cousteau Underwater Park is located. We sailed the 8 miles there but due to the light winds associated with the morning, we didn’t really get up and go until mid-morning. Once the winds picked up, we scooted right along loosing our “race” with Orpailleur once again. When I asked about this, Dale says its because they have new sails, a battened main and they are probably better sailors than we are. We anchored in the bay across from the park and once secure in our holding, changed into our bathing suits and headed across to the park.

We took the dinghies to the far side where it is shallow and tied to a couple of mooring balls before slipping over the sides and snorkeling around the smaller of the two islands that make up the park. This was a marvelous area and once again, I wished we had brought our scuba gear.

The area where we first started was sandy, with some coral heads and large rocks. We swam between the two islands where it was even more shallow with lots of coral and then along the wall that rose up to make the island. At one spot in about 30 feet of water, I found a statue of a man waving. I tried to free dive down to get a better snap shot. We’ll see if it will upload.

We saw loads of barrell sponges and lots of different types of coral. We swam through clouds of sergeant majors, blue chromises, and goatfish.

I chased a juvenile French angelfish, some foureye butterfly fish and a filefish of some sort with the camera. Dale spotted a flounder that I was able to take a picture of since it wasn’t moving and a black durgon that I wasn’t quick enough to catch. It was a great time. I was delighted to see that when I turned around to see where Gerry & Nicky were, they were right behind us.

Nicky had invited us over for dinner this evening and I had already prepared the salad I was contributing to the meal when Gerry called to ask what time we had. We told him and discovered that they were working an hour ahead of us. We scrambled around checking our various clocks on the wall, on the alarm clock, the chart plotter, etc. All indicated the same time. When we arrived, we learned that they had adjusted their clocks for daylight savings time, which doesn’t effect the Caribbean. Nicky was upset that she had given up an hour of sleep that she didn’t need to. At least now, we’re all working in the same time zone.