To the West the sun is setting over a seamless horizon of the Caribbean ocean and I am moving about the boat in vain to gain a stronger internet connection so I may write emails and see what friends back home are doing in winter. I hold my computer up like a baby Simba before yielding to the lack of signal and retire to the bow of the boat to journal about our anchorage instead. (It’s now 3 nights without internet. Scoff at me but I dare you to live your life in the city for 3 days without internet… In many ways I love the detachment but sometimes… after 4 months of traveling further and further away from friends and a steady job… it’s nice to reconnect even for a stalkerish facebook moment.)

To the East, I see the lush vibrant green mountains of Deshaies Guadeloupe; large formidable cumulonimbus clouds gather on the other side of the mountains. But I feel protected in this harbor. The mountains extend outward like a hug in the form of a U shape. Light waves lull the boat back and forth and I sit here on the bow with the last good beer we stashed away. A crazy Frenchman is blowing a conch shell emitting the deep blast of a horn-sound throughout the entire anchorage for an impressively long time. This moment, this relaxing moment, everything is good. The anchor is set soundly in the sand below, Mike is putting chicken on the grill, and my biggest concern is if some Frenchman decides to anchor right in front of our view for sunset tonight.

I’m serious about that Frenchman concern… In every anchorage Mike and I have been we’ve witnessed or had our friends witness some ridiculous maneuver or interesting anchoring choice all by the French. I love the French but when it comes to anchoring… ayiyi 😉 … In our last anchorage… there were two boats (Gaia being one) in the entire  bay and a French boat decided to anchor and sit about 10 feet away from our bow…..

To point out the issues here; both boats are on moorings … apples with apples mentality… you avoid anchoring where there are moorings because you swing differently. Secondly, we’re in paradise…. Give us some room for Jacques sake.

In another bay a boat was zooming around looking for an anchoring location and turned so close to our friends boat the Frenchman ran into the anchor chain of our friends boat giving their boat a great lurch. ….Editors note… these are just two stories, I still love and admire the French. Keep on doing your thing France, I dig the wine and baguettes. C’est la vie.

~Kirsten

From Dominica we sailed to Base Terre Guadeloupe, the capital; from Base Terre to Pigeon Bay, to Deshaies, to English Harbor Antigua.

Basse Terre French style windows, the old city

newer style Basse Terre

Chilling in Basse Terre Guadeloupe after customs was…. not open on Saturday or Sunday.

Did some laundry

noticed we needed to polish all the stainless steel onboard

Mike finishing another Horatio Hornblower book

Deshaies, Guadeloupe:

Turtles to the left and right of us in Pigeon Bay.

It was a bit crowded but we found a little spot for Gaia in the outer permitter near a great snorkeling reef. We put out a stern anchor to stabilize us.

Easy glassy sailing from Pigeon to Deshaies.

We continued our snorkeling and hiking streak. And we’ve taken great strides to  assimilating ourselves to island time. We’ve completed small projects onboard with screens and perfecting our internet wiring to capture as many internets as possible. We also tried the local drink T- Punch. It’s a deadly 100 proof rum with a lime and a touch of sugar (ice optional but I think you’d have to be a viking to withstand it/enjoy it without ice). Made properly, (i.e. made with our friends Nills and Lisa) the drink can be enjoyable and festive instead of a heavyweight knockout.

Below are our meanderings around Terre de Haut. Quaint beautiful island with old french zeal and class. Terre de Haut has a great community. Again, I could stay in Guadeloupe indefinitely. I love trying to learn the language and the beauty here.

Today we relocate to Marigot Bay for more snorkeling and free diving on a shipwreck!

Where is Jacques Cousteau’s favorite dive spot? Pigeon Island Guadeloupe.

A man as cool as he is legendary, Mike & I had to stop over and check it out; the Jacques Cousteau National Underwater Park. We blared our soundtrack to Life Aquatic and made anchor just a few miles South of Deshaies in Pigeon Bay.

Mr. Cousteau is an accomplished man; famed for underwater exploration and research, he is also a  renown oceanographer, naval officer, and filmmaker. As a kid growing up next to the Atlantic, I loved the water. You could barely pull me out of it for lunch. In his films and books, I, like so many others, was influenced by Jacques Cousteau and his amazing work to introduce the Ocean to the masses. Another great facilitator to my love of the ocean is my mom. She checked out the coolest library book in all of NY; which held detailed pictures identified hundreds of corals and fishes (*inside family joke*).

 Upon entering the boundaries  of the Underwater Park we were still in 200 feet of water. We spotted the largest turtle I’ve ever seen floating on the surface 30 feet starboard of us. It had a dark brown shell and couldn’t have been smaller than 3.5 feet long (head to tail). We didn’t see the head but I think it may have been the Loggerhead (status: Threatened and known to grow quit large) or the Hawksbill (status: endangered). We  anchored and jumped into the clear water. We checked the anchor and Mike spotted a large turtle in front of us. We followed the turtle leisurely diving down to see there were two long thin white fish swimming directly under the shell of the turtle. It was surreal. We were chasing turtles in the Leeward Islands. As we sat and watched the sun dip down, I spotted turtle after turtle dipping its grumpy little head above the surface for only a moment of air before diving back down.

We dinghy-ed over to Pigeon Island and tied off to a mooring ball used for small dive boats & dinghies. We rolled over the side  and plunged into the warm crystal clear water. The Underwater Park is famous for being untouched by fisheries and holding hundreds of species of coral and fishes. The entire time I kept giggling with happiness.  We had drinks with a couple we met in Deshaies, Nills & Lisa  on a C&C 36. Nills was once a dive master in Puerto Rico. We had seen him dive down in Deshaies and he moved effortlessly and stayed down what seemed like an eternity. It was really impressive. So, with me being barely able to free dive down to 17 feet, I asked for some tips. He was very encouraging to practice little by little and gave me the most helpful advice. People overwork themselves. Once you jackknife down into 5 feet, you don’t need your arms and you don’t need to work until you jackknife back up. I tried it. And wow. He’s right. If I don’t use my arms and legs while I’m below I can hold my breathe so much longer. You really need to calm your body and not exert yourself. Over those 3 days I went from diving 17 feet and gasping for air at the surface to about 28 feet (and gasping for air). On the SouthEast side of Pigeon Island is the commemorating statue of Jacques Cousteau giving the okay diving sign. Unfortunately he’s missing his “OK” arm, must have been sacrificed to the sea god. Mike dove down the 38 feet and touched the beanie of Cousteau. I got about as close as Mike’s fin to touching the statue before I said nope, that’s all the air I got for this and surfaced. I was creeped out when my mask for a third time suctioned tighter onto my face. I had never felt that much pressure on my mask and didn’t want to push my limits too quickly. On our snorkeling trips and free dives we saw the most amazing corals brain, staghorn, elkhorn. We saw countless butterfly, angel, and parrot fish all gorgeous in their own way. And my big take-away was watching a barracuda about 2 feet long pass right past me (mind you, everything looks distorted and larger underwater… so this thing appeared to be about 3 feet long!).

What I think is in front of me….

Aaaaand what’s actually in front of me….

I was torn between floating perfectly still and frantically swimming over to Mike to get his attention and warn him of the predator in our vicinity. I ended up waving my hands frantically trying to get Mike’s attention only to notice my gold wedding ring. Barracudas are notoriously attracted to shiny objects and me being me decided that was just too much shiny to be waving around in front of said barracuda. So I stuck my left hand above water and swam just behind the barracuda for a moment.  There were also 3 black fish (shaped like an angle fish but rounder) swimming behind the barracuda like a posse. So that was cool, I swam with the barracuda posse.

In the end. I fell in love with the clear water perfect for novice or expert scuba divers novice or expert snorkelers. The amount of life and color which drenched the ocean floor was overwhelming. It also opened my eyes to how much we need to do to protect this environment. We’re not all accomplished oceanographers and marine explorers but we can change our daily lives bit by bit so we consume and waste less. We can find programs that aim to preserve and clean the ocean. 

WOW! I’m in Antigua & Barbuda (pronounced An-Teeg-uh). If you would have told a 10 year old Kirsten living in the beautiful town of Norwalk, Connecticut that I’d travel & live in China, Singapore, and one day travel to Antigua on a sailboat…. I probably would have merely walked away with raised eyebrows. But here I stand/sit floating in the harbor of Antigua. When you’re working for your goals, it’s amazing the opportunities that present themselves. And life has that funny way of propelling you to your goal then throwing in road blocks just as you thought you were home free. And as you work and toil your way through the roadblocks… there comes a day. A day when you look up  and you come to the realization…. you’re no longer in the thick of the fight; that you’ve “made” it. And you’re thankful. In Antigua, I finally lifted my head up. And it’s not to say I wasn’t thankful the entire trip South, I’ve been thankful every day of my entire life.

After sailing 1,070 statute miles to Antigua we were tired. As we approached English harbor we took down the sails and turned the engine on. One catch to that sentence. The engine did not “turn” on. In fact, nothing made a sound aside for the howling wind. So the sails went back up and we turned back into the 4-6 foot swells. And Mike the amazing engineer went to town. We noticed there was no electrical pulse…. so our first thought was the electrical system may have gotten a dose of ocean spray from one of the many rogue waves. Mike worked his way back checking the voltage of the engine first. nadda. He surmised it had something to do with the alternator (which provides alternating current from the engine) and “unplugged” that. He took a look at the 200 amp fuse…. and that was blown aka shorted. By some miracle we had a spare on board …. crossed our fingers and tried again. POOF…. at 1.5 hours later the engine slowly came back to life. We spent the next two days doing laundry, fixing leaks, killing mildew and mold and putting the boat from ocean passage  to a more livable state. We learned quickly the island receives a scarce amount of rain and in the marina facilities laundry can cost $ 30 USD per load of laundry. We made the mistake of taking our laundry there exactly once. For the next 2 loads we ventured further into town to find a small path that lead to a cute pink home. A woman was on the phone as we entered. She lazily motioned we leave our laundry on the floor then turned away. We saw a sign with the cost per load of laundry but weren’t sure what else she needed or when to return. Seeing we were still standing there she shoo’ed us out the door  silently mouthing an innocuous “Later today.” Okay…… so that’s obviously settled. We’ll just come back for our 2 or 3 loads of laundry later today with cash… I suppose.

First sign you’re not from the islands….. you initially require and expect details/attention as soon as you arrive at some form of a service business. Still trying to slow down.

Antigua & Barbuda are two separate islands. In the 18th century Nelsons Dockyard English Harbor, Antigua served as the British Naval headquarters for the Leeward Island chain. Well chosen because it lies at the Eastern-most edge of the island chain. When the dominant wind roars from the East year round and everyone uses sail to travel from island to island, it’s “wicked smaht” to pick an island you can quickly deploy a fleet without worry of sailing against the wind and the current. Antigua

Hike up to Mt. Shirley

Hiked Mt Shirley and enjoyed a mango smoothie and view at the top.

View of English and Falmouth Harbor

Old Anchor left to wither in the ages of time. We snorkeled here. Saw some cool fishies and a shipwreck.

Moved to Falmouth Harbor and saw turtles and beautiful water at our stern

My Ma n Pa will appreciate this. The Royal Clipper. Cruising clipper ship; sails from port to port under nightfall.