The Rest of The Season--Part II Guadeloupe

We finally caught up with our friends Skip and Maddie, in Deshaies, Guadeloupe.  Over the past few years Skip has become our "cruising guru" and he has taken us, like others before us, under his wing.  Thanks, Skip!

Visiting Deshaies was the first time I felt truly down island, since geographically Guadeloupe is in the lower half of the Leeward Islands.  And Deshaies was the perfect mix of quaint French small village exploration, hiking, restaurants and site seeing.  Another gem!

Skip and Maddie took us for a half day hike up the Deshaies River, which was beautiful.  We stopped at a swimming hole for a brief cool off, and marveled at the lush vegetation

Maddie, Skip and Me along the stream bed

We really enjoyed the hike, but never found the elusive falls at the top.  So that night I again explored the stream, but this time at one of the waterfront restaurants with an internet connection. There I found another blog, written better than ours, and by a dog, no less.  And with lots more pictures. Felt a bit like the canine protagonist. Here it is, but please come back to us afterwards! 

Now that you are back, time to describe another gem.  The Jardin Botanique de Deshaies.  Worth both the 45 minute hike up the road to the south of town, and the price of admission. Realizing that we didn't take enough pictures the day before, we made up for it at the Gardens:

Koi Pond

Feeding Frenzy!

Nectar for the lorikeets

Make sure to share!

Who's turn is it?

Deshaies, on the way back from the Gardens

Deshaies Sunset

We made stops with Saralane along the west coast of Guadeloupe to visit the Cousteau Underwater Reserve at Ilet Pigeon, and then Les Saintes.  Then we crossed over with Skip and Maddie to our next stop, Dominica:

Saralane escorts Pratique south!

The Rest of The Season-Part I

It's not easy keeping up with writing blogs, especially when you're 1800 miles and 3 months away from the subject.

In St. Barts we decided to continue south instead of east to Barbuda.  We figured we'd visit Antigua and Barbuda on the way back up north, later in the spring.  So St. Kitts was next:

Sailing past the Brimstone Hill Fortress

Basseterre

We anchored a few nites in the busy and historic city of Basseterre.  The efficient local "bus" system makes it easy to get places, so we hopped on one to take us to the Brimstone Hill Fortress.  Unfortunately the bus takes you to the entrance to the Fortress grounds which is well below it.  Fortunately the first tourists in a passing rental car saw our plight and gave us a ride up and later back down the hill.

"I have to walk up there?"

The views and the grounds are spectacular:

The bloggers, with St. Eustatius and Saba in the background

We heard about the Green Velvet Monkeys that were brought by the British, and now are reported to  outnumber people on St. Kitts, and we were happy to be greeted by a few while leaving the fort.

We walked along the main road down to Old Road Town, then up the hill to Romney Manor.

Along the road to Romney Manor

The manor was once owned by the great, great, great grandfather of Thomas Jefferson, and Lord Romney in 1834 was one of the early slave emancipators:

350 year old saman tree at Romney Manor

Grounds of Romney Manor

Another oasis in the otherwise bustling city of Basseterre was the Palms Court Gardens.  The property consists of a single guest house, but the highlight is a beautiful, large infinity pool and surrounding gardens.  A great place to relax, swim, and have lunch

View of Basseterre from the Palms Court pool

Guest House

The next night we moved south to White House Bay, near the Great Salt Pond.  We noticed activity at the beach bar, so took the dinghy ashore to enjoy it.  A well dressed host in all whites greeted us at the dock, only to inform us that they'd love to have us "any other night" because on this night they were hosting a private party for guests of the newly opened super yacht marina around the corner in the Great Salt Pond.  Oh well. . . . We did explore the marina, called Christopher Harbour Marina, and lo and behold it was indeed a super yacht facility--a few of the St. Barts Bucket Regatta boats were there!  Then we pushed our tails back between our legs and returned to our little mother ship for a quiet nite to ourselves.

Before we got to our next island, we passed by Nevis and then Montserrat.  One of my former work partners weathered a hurricane while vacationing there a number of years back, and I was curious about the status of the resort after impact by such a huge force of nature.  No signs of any ill effects when we passed by. The same could not be said of Montserrat.  The island was devastated by a series of recent volcanic eruptions, and the lava fields were enormous:

Next stop, Guadeloupe!

St. Barths

From St. Martin we set off for an easy upwind motorsail to St. Barths.  We arrived in Gustavia mid afternoon on March 18. 

We heard the island was "upscale," and before long we saw some of the neighboring boats at anchor and realized it was true.

"Uh, ok. This one has its own waterslide"

"But this one has a nice garage"

However, this weekend, "upscale" became an understatement because the annual "Bucket Regatta" was being held there.  So it was no surprise to see 35 mega-mega yachts gathering, for 3 days of "friendly" racing around the island. 

Nice boats, guys.

The colorful history of this kind of racing dates back to the mid-1980's in Nantucket, where a small group of well known and very rich owners decided to settle a debate about their yachts out on the water.  The event soon moved to Newport and in the mid 1990's spilled over to St. Barths as well.  Needless to say, there was a lot of gawking going on along the docks!


OK, this one I could call home!

Here you can see we really tried to get away from the scene at the docks.  That's Susan at the beach, but, alas, in the background were, yup, more mega-yachts. 



These boats are so big here, there's no room to swim!

We decided to stay for the first day of racing on Friday.  Spectacular scene!  To really appreciate just how big these yachts are, try to pick out crew.

Downwind leg with Spinnakers out

Day 1 winner Rosehearty races toward the line