January - February 2025

After the kids departed in early January, we headed south to the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Since we were going to spend a good amount of time in these territories we decided to try and work on our French. We signed up for Babble and while we did several lessons – I will say, we have not improved our fluency at all and sadly still speak “un peu”. That said, we were able to get by just fine, even in the towns where they speak little English – it’s amazing what a smile, hand signals (pointing to “that” croissant) and Google translate can do.

In mid January, our friends the Hoyts came to Guadeloupe to spend a week with us. Nea, Karl, Mather, Abby (Mather’s fiancé) and Harry all came! Sadly, Josie couldn’t make it as she is teaching and couldn’t get the time off. The weeks’ highlights included: Hiking up the steep road to the Botanical Garden in Deshaise, scuba diving (for the kids) at the Jacques Cousteau National Reserve, touring Terre-de-Haute (in Iles Des Saintes) via scooters along with our Salty Dawg friends Todd and Cathy Barr who as it turns out are closely connected to Karl and Nea as Todd grew up with Nea’s brother- in-law Anders. (The more we travel the smaller the world gets!)!

For their last day we had scheduled a full day tour with Antoinette’s Taxi service. Antionette took us all around Guadeloupe: we saw banana farms, waterfalls, the rain forest and the zoo. We all agreed that the zoo was the best part of the tour. I had low expectations, but was wowed by the animals and just the way the zoo is tucked into the hillside with lots of walking trails and open space. We enountered all kinds of monkeys, toucans, lemurs, panthers, bats and more. In the Lemur exhibit we got to actually be in the pen with these very curious creatures! After a quick stop at a decidedly local restaurant called Chez Doudou in downtown PtP we wrapped up the tour in the seaside village of St. Anne. We were all so exhausted from the day that we just made spaghetti dinner on board and crashed! It was a great week with the Hoyt clan. Guadeloupe is definitely an easy island for friends to come and go from (hint, hint).

After the Hoyts headed back home, Billy and I stayed for a couple of days in Point A Pitre to take advantage of the shops and services available at the marina and then we headed back down to Iles Des Saintes where we grabbed a much sought after mooring by the uninhabited island of Ile Cabrit. The winds had really picked up and it was so calm in this mooring field. We spent the week relaxing and hiking and swimming.

When the winds eased a bit, we sailed south past Dominica to Martinique. The winds were still strong (18-22 kts with gusts to 28) but we reefed both sails and made good time. Our first stop was in St. Pierre on the northwest coast where we got a nice mooring right at the back of the field so our sunsets were amazing with nothing behind us but the horizon, that was until a huge triple masted schooner ghosted in and dropped an anchor right behind us! (see the photo below – it was really imposing!).

We connected with our Dawg friends Beth and Peter from SV Lasata and rented a car (which is actually really easy to do) from a local lot so we could see more of the interior of the island. We had a great day. I drove and Beth sat shotgun and was a great navigator. We drove up to the Mt. Peele base station and hiked up into the clouds. There were some really steep sections and when the clouds cleared (and rain stopped) we had some great views. On our drive back down we stopped into Le Morne Rouge then drove to the northeast coast where we stopped at the Rhum Clement distillery and had an awesome lunch at a little restaurant called Le Petit Palais Chez Valence which is in the very quiet town of Basse-Point. We finished the day driving up the northwest coast on steep and windy roads that led to beautiful black sand beaches. It was a great day as we covered the whole northern section of the island and I was relieved to put the car in to the car park with no bumps or incidents!

Next we sailed south to Grand Anse D’Arlet where we set the anchor and explored the little beach town which is made up mostly of restaurants side by side all along the beach and several small hotels. There is a beautiful long beach where many people come to float around all day with the sea turtles.

In yet another small world story….we had met a great Salty Dawg named Sandy back in Antiqua who single hands her 47 foot sailboat Odyssey – it’s a brave group these solo sailors. It turns out Sandy is childhood friends with Susan DePew from Marblehead and had visited her last summer where she met Sue Riordan and they really hit it off. So much so, that Sandy had invited Sue to come to the Caribbean and she did! They had sailed up from Bequia to Martinique and we wanted to catch up so we sailed down to meet them in St. Anne. St. Anne is a wonderful town on the Southernmost point of Martinique with an open anchorage which is well protected and there were literally hundreds of boats anchored – but there was plenty of space.

We met up with Sandy and Sue at the dingy dock and Sandy led us on a hike out to Petit Anse de Salines – it was a long hike, over 3 miles each way, and poor Sue had flip flops on so her feet took a beating – BUT we had a blast. We walked along several beautiful coves and beaches – some of which in true French style are clothing optional. It is very cool how comfortable they are nude while we feel awkward being fully dressed. We had a lovely lunch on the beach (there are no hotels out this far so it’s only open during the daytime) – and then we walked the 3+ miles back to town just in time for sunset cocktails. It was too short a visit with Sue as she was heading back home the next day, but we had a blast!

We stayed just another few days before we bade “au revoir” to Martinique and headed south toward Bequia where we will spend some time getting projects done before our friends Don and Joan arrive to spend some time with us in the Grenadines!

Bye for now…..