Christmas in Antigua

We got to Antigua on the 7th and Amanda flew down on the 17th which made my birthday extra special.  We have been sailing around the island and stayed in a different bay each night.  Supposedly there are 360 beaches on the island-I don’t know about that but there are certainly quite a few.  It’s been a little bit of a bummer because we have had the Christmas winds down here and it has stirred up all the water so the snorkeling hasn’t been great and there have been a couple of nights when it was really howling.  But it has been so nice to have her here with us.  We decorated a little bit for Christmas and one night we made and decorated Christmas chains and hung them in the galley.

Sunday night we hiked up to Shirley Heights which is in English Harbor and they had a steel drum band playing and a barbecue.  It was a lot of fun.

Then on Monday we sailed over to Green Island and we had a nice fire on the beach.  We decided they should change the name of this island to hermit crab island because it was full of hermit crabs.  

Today we sailed over to Deep Bay and snorkeled the wreck of the Andes and now we are sailing back to Jolly Harbor with the engines off, which is where we picked Amanda up and we will spend the night there so we can take her to the airport tomorrow.
She flies back home on Christmas Eve and then we will head to St. Martin. 

It was a wonderful week and I’m sure going to miss her when she leaves.    
MERRY CHRISTMAS to all and to all a good night

Sailing back to Jolly Harbor with just the wind cruising at around 6 knots

Amanda trying to relax on the trampoline but Max wasn't letting her

Goofing around at the fort in English Harbor

The view from Shirley Heights

The steel drum band at Shirley Heights

relaxing on the beach on Green Island

Amanda's first beach fire

Ready for Christmas

Les Saints

After 4 wonderful days in Les Saints, we decided to head over to Guadeloupe Thursday.  We really enjoyed Les Saints and the people there are very nice even though it's so hard to communicate with them because hardly any of them speak English and if they do, it’s very little.  We rented a scooter on Wednesday and rode all over Terre Den Haut, which is the biggest of the four islands.  It only took about 4 hours because it is pretty small.  We visited three different beaches and two were on the East side of the island so the waves there were fairly big.  I know Wes talked about the sights when we cruised around on the scooter but I though I would post some pictures.
It was nice visiting a place that we hadn't been to before. 
 
The sail to Guadeloupe was very nice.  The winds blowing around 12-15 knots and we cruised along nicely averaging 6-7 knots.  It is so much nicer going north up the island chain than south.  You usually have the wind coming out of the east / southeast pushing you along nicely on a broad reach.   

Today we moved down to the North end of the island to a town called Deshaies (Day-ay) and we will probably stay here for a few days before we head to Antigua.  We liked Deshaies when we were here on our way down island. 

A couple tall ships and cruise boats actually came into Les Saints while we were there

Not quite a Harley

You can see the fort on the top of the hill on the left

Fort Napoleon

There were some big iguanas on the island

Our Thanksgiving dinner

Enjoying dinner with our new friends Travis & Joanne

Back to France, or at least the french islands

We are finally back to a french island. We've been down in the Grenadines and St Lucia for four months. Today we got to Martinique. I went into town today and got two croissant and a baguette. I have no idea how the french make the croissants and baguettes but they make fantastic pastries. We have had baguettes and croissants in the Grenadines and St Lucia but they really suck compared to the ones you get on a french island. It also doesn’t matter where you go on a french island, what town you're are in, any bakery you go to has delicious baguettes and croissants. That coupled with the fact that wine is also delicious and cheap makes these the best islands for food and drink.

One other good thing on the french islands is the price of red meat. We haven’t had much red meat down in the Grenadines and St Lucia. I think we sprang for rib eyes once and t-bones once. We had sirloin twice.  Not much for 4 months. But now that we are on a french island we can get rib eyes and t-bones for 22 euros a kilogram. Which is about 10 bucks a pound. I’m looking forward to that.

Lexie and Max think the crabs taste the same on the french islands and they are probably right.


I wrote that when we got to Martinique but never got a chance to post it. We are in Les Saints now. We made it up here in one day from Martinique, That's about 70 knots. We were doing about 8 knots most of the time,  except when we were by Dominique then we lost the wind and were only doing 5 knots. But it was a good sail.

Today we rented a scooter and went around the island.  We checked out several beaches and also Fort Napoleon. This fort is really well preserved. It has a museum inside the main building, which had alot of displays but they were all in french which I can not read very well.


We have turkey for tomorrow and we have some friends to share it with so we are planing on a happy thanksgiving.

                                                           A sunset in Martinique

                                                       Max and Lexie hunting crabs

                                                        Fort of France Martinique
                                                

                                    The volcano that wiped out  St Pierre Martinique in 1902

  
                                                  A club Med cruise boat in Les Saints

St. Lucia-2nd time around

Last week we were heading out to the bay to anchor for a couple of nights until we had a good weather window to head to Martinique.  But while out there Wes noticed that the solar wasn't charging our batteries.  Not good.  So we ended up heading back into the marina.  They have an electrical business in the marina and we asked them if they could come out and look at our solar system.  Wes was pretty sure it was the controller after getting zapped a few times but he wanted them to confirm it.  The gentleman said he would come out as long as it wasn't raining because he really couldn't check it if the sun wasn't shining.  But of course it rained and was cloudy the next day, which was Friday.  He finally came out on Saturday morning and confirmed it was the controller, which was only about 15 months old.  Wes talked to Alex who installed our solar and he also talked to another guy on the dock who had the same unit and they both said to call Outback (the company we purchased the unit from)  first thing Monday because they are really good to work with.   Wes was on the phone as soon as they were open and sure enough the guy said it was under warranty and he would get a new unit sent out right away.  Yay, finally something worked in our favor. 

While we were waiting for the new controller we decided to rent a car and tour the island. The island is fairly big at a little over 238 square miles and a population of a little over 173 thousand.  There is one main road that the majority of the way around the island and it gets really congested with each town you get to.  We were actually stopped for a while in Castries which is the capital and a very busy city.  It's different from the other islands where the road doesn't follow along the coast so if you want to get to the water or a beach, you had to know which side road to take.  We went through the rainforest, to the piton's, and the sulphur springs where the volcano is which is like a miniature Yellowstone park without old faithful.  We were going to go to the waterfalls but they wouldn't let the dogs go so we skipped that but we took them on a nice long hike which they seemed to enjoy.

We received the controller late Friday, which was a lot quicker than we expected and Wes got it installed today.  We will probably head to Martinique on Monday, depending on the wind and weather. 

The town of Castries with the Pitons in the back

Oh the smell of sulfur

 

The lighthouse on the South end of the island

There are a lot of cliffs on the island and only a few beaches

Heading North

On the 27th we started heading North.  Hurricane season has just about ended and luckily it was a very quiet one in the Caribbean this year.  Before we left St. Vincent I wanted to visit a couple of spots that we hadn't been to yet.  We stopped in Wallilabou which has a fairly deep bay so we had to get a mooring ball and then one of the boat boys came out and tied the stern to the pylons on the dock.  Wallilabou became a popular spot because in 2003 they filmed part of Pirates of the Caribbean here and there are still quite a few props that were left from the shooting.  The restaurant was there prior to filming and they built around it the building where Elizabeth's father worked.  They built the dock where the ships would leave from and the courtyard still had the hanging rope where they tried to hang Jack Sparrow.  There were a lot of the wooden caskets all over the place which were the ones that they would throw overboard.
Then we headed up to Chateaubelair for one night and on the 29th we sailed up to St. Lucia.  We checked into Soufriere which is on the SW end of the island.  We already had the pet permit approved from the vet there so we thought it would be fairly easy to get the dogs checked in.  But the vet couldn't come out to check them until the next morning so the poor dogs were quarantined to the boat again for 24 hours.  They seem to be getting use to it though.  Soufriere is right at the base of the Pitons which are two fairly steep hills.  After we took the dogs in for a walk we decided to head up to Rodney Bay which is on the north end of the island.  They have a very nice marina there and its pretty reasonable so we decided to stay there a few days.  It's nice because you can dinghy to a huge shopping area with tons of restaurants, grocery stores and a casino.
It feels good to start heading north and getting out of the Grenadines.  Don't get me wrong, the Grenadines are beautiful but after three months you pretty much have seen everything and then some.

St Vincent:

Lexie was looking in the crab holes again-can you tell?

 

 

The Pitons on St. Lucia