Return to Iles de Saints

With an early morning start, we sailed north from St. Pierre across the Dominique/Martinique Channel in a very brisk 20-knot beam reach, allowing us to cover the 56 miles to Portsmouth, Dominique in a little under 9 hrs, 30 minutes, for a respectful 6 knots average speed.

Gee, I wonder why they have all those fenders out?

We quickly found an anchoring spot, well clear of other boats and got dinner going in anticipation of an early night’s sleep. Little did we know a local boat boy put a late-arriving charter boat on a buoy just abeam of us. It was a boatload of young Germans, and sure enough we swung into them later that night with a gentle tap when the wind did a 60-degree shift to the north (somewhat unusual). At four in the morning we got some strange looks from the wives/girl friends, but did shorten our anchor since we were leaving early that morning anyway.

With our tail between our legs we hightailed it out of Dodge and once again caught some great beam reach sailing in 20 to 25 knots on our way to Iles des Saints. It was only a 22-mile romp across the Guadeloupe Passage, but the strong winds had us fairly exhausted by the time we approached the headland.  We had originally planned to enter through a narrow reef (the same route we used when leaving Iles des Saints last season) but saw the waves breaking on both sides and decided it was a little too risky, so we opted to go around the south end of a small island called Les Augustines. Given the strong wind we had our hands full getting the genoa in and didn’t pay as close of attention to our navigation as we should. I had noticed a dive boat off to my right, close in to the island, and suddenly heard a very loud whistle. I looked up and could see the reef dead ahead and without thinking I spun the port about 40 degrees to port, just clearing the reef. Not sure if we would have hit anything given the depth but that was a wake-up call about entering an area that we hadn’t plotted out on our chart plotter ahead of time.

The anchorage at Terre de Haut, Iles des Saints.

The rest of the way into Terre de Haut, the small resort town in Iles de Saints, was thankfully unremarkable. We found a mooring ball, got the boat squared away, and headed into town in the dingy to clear customs using the super easy French computer check-in procedure. Walked around town a bit looking for the best (and most expensive) ice cream in the Caribbean. Got the obligatory fresh baguettes for lunch and picked up some other groceries. It was nice coming back to a town we had already visited and were familiar with.

Heading back to Flying Cloud, we noticed a couple of boats we’d last seen in St. Martin the previous season, Windlass (Dee and Pete) and Lady Hawk (Deb and Dan). We got together on Lady Hawk with all three couples later for sundowners and rehashed our respective travels over the last year.

This French artist was surprisingly friendly and funny.

The artist sold this beautiful clay fired masks for about $20, a steal at that price.

The next morning we headed over to a small nearby island, Ilet a Cabrit, with Lady Hawk to explore and get some exercise. Just by the dingy landing we met an intrepid Frenchman who had set up camp making exquisite clay masks. We talked with him at length and asked him about trails on the island. With Dan in the lead we headed up the trail through a lightly forested area passing various ruins of a French fort that once guarded the entrance to the bay.

The main fort and parade grounds at the top of the island.

We climbed around the large fort at the top, trying to figure out the construction and purpose of the various stone buildings. Dan was pretty sure the heavily-walled building was the powder magazine. Local goats wandered in and out of the various buildings with their “kids” lingering behind.

Dan enjoying the view from the south side of Islet a Cabrit looking towards Terre de Bas.

At the very top on the other side of the island was a beautiful view over to Guadeloupe. We had considered sailing up to Marie Gallant that week, but the six hours of windward sailing discouraged us.

The view looking northeast towards Marie Gallant.

Dan came back to the boat and helped hoist me up the backstay so I could get our SSB antennae reattached. I had been thinking about how to have Meryl do it, but with Dan’s brute strength it turned out to be a quick and easy job. After having met Lady Hawk and Windlass only briefly before in Salinas and St. Martin, it was great to finally spend some time together and get to know each other better.

On the 12th we all hiked across Terre de Haut to Baie de Pompierre, a nice beach on the windward side of the island, where we all jumped in and played in the waves, cooling down from the hot hike. We found a nearby hut that had some good baguette sandwiches and enjoyed a long, leisurely lunch, just like the French.