Heading North

Iles des Saintes, Guadeloupe Leeward Islands

Well we have been in the Caribbean since early November and been delaying our turnaround for the last few weeks, but we had to start home or we would never get there. So, we left the Tobago Cays and started the trip north with a short stop in St Vincent. The start of the sail was through some squalls with vibrant rainbows all around us.

The wind and waves then calmed down, making for a quick and comfortable passage, past Mustique and Bequia, across the channel and up the St Vincent coast. Just south of Bequia we came across a large humpback whale going south.

We stopped in Wallilabou, a picturesque bay mid-way up St Vincent’s east coast. Wallilabou is famous as the main location for the filming of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The sets are still intact and make a nice backdrop to the green hills that surround the bay.

We got an early start the next day with a plan to sail overnight to the Isle de Saintes Guadeloupe, about 180 miles north. The weather was good with 15 – 20 knot winds from the east south east, allowing Berkeley East to sail fast. In fact, we were making much better time than expected, and found ourselves so far ahead of schedule that we where going to arrive into the Saintes at 2:00 in the morning. Not wanting to anchor at night, we decided to divert to Martinique and anchor in the day and then sail the remaining distance the next day. The sail from Martinique to the Saintes the next day was another nice reach. We are getting used to this good sailing weather, a nice change from the rough and windy conditions we had coming south. We arrived in the Saintes as planned with time to spare before our friends from Australia arrived.

After over six months we were both in dire need of a haircut, so we headed into shore. As with most things we do these days, this turned into a real adventure. Trying to describe how you want you hair cut to someone who only speaks French, when we don’t speak any French, was a challenge. After a lot of pantomiming, we got the point across and both got good haircuts so we could look somewhat respectable as we re-entered the normal world of the US.