April 16
Arrived in Deshaies Harbor in north Guadeloupe on the 12th for a couple days. It’s a French island so the food is really good but the anchorages are crazy. There are mooring balls close in but our boat is a little too big to do that. We had also been warned that the holding wasn’t great and to take care anchoring, leaving lots of swing room as the boats can move in a 360 degree circle during the night and they don’t necessarily move in the same direction. What?
They weren’t kidding. We decided to drop anchor on the outside edge of the harbor to give ourselves more room. The anchor didn’t want to set the first couple tries but we finally got it to a point where we were satisfied. Even with that we decided to sit on the boat for a couple hours with the anchor alarm on to see what happened. Everything looked good so we dropped the dinghy and went into town to clear customs and have a nice dinner.
A word about anchor alarms. We have a program on my ipad that works with gps. Once you drop anchor it acquires a gps signal and places you on the map. You draw a circle around the location to allow for swing room as no boat sits in one spot due to wind and current. If the locator leaves the circle at any time an alarm sounds on the ipad indicating you may want to check and see where your boat is drifting to.
Things still looked good when we got back to the boat after dinner so off to bed. I woke at 5am with the anchor alarm screaming. When I went topside to see what was happening I found Gary who had been up a good portion of the night on the flybridge watching our boat swing in a complete circle. We had out 145 ft of chain and our boat is 64 ft long so that’s almost 400 ft of clearance needed to not hit another boat. Because the boats WERE all facing in different directions. Never seen that before as normally boats at anchor will all swing in tandem. Well, it is a French country and they do like to be different….
After a couple uncertain nights we decided to give up and moved down to Isles des Saints just south of Guadeloupe. It’s a group of small islands with pristine water for diving and snorkeling. All of the close in anchorages here are mooring balls only but THEY can handle boats up to 20 meters. Since we roll in at just under that number we decided to try it. With some patience and a little ingenuity we were able to attach to the mooring ball and here we sit like a cuckoo among all the sailboats. It’s beautiful, peaceful and we’re staying here a week to just relax and have fun before moving on to Martinique.
Staying on French islands definitely has advantages. All the restaurants are good and fresh croissants and baguettes every day are spoiling us.