St. Martin to Guadelupe

  St. Martin, 2010  

Marigot - the French part of St. Martin

April 30, 2010. Early morning Wereda dropped the anchor in Marigot Bay, St. Martin, French West Indies. It took us almost 40 hours to get here, mostly due to the calms. Clearing-in formalities were simple and done on the computer by myself at the Fort Louis Marina. St. Martin calls itself a "friendly island" and soon enough Maciek and I, we were befriended by a couple of local ladies that offered us a ride to the supermarket and we reciprocated with some drinks at one of the bars. Another day, we were offered a car tour of the island and were taken to the capital of Dutch side - Philipsburg. The ride was utterly crazy since in addition to quite a chaotic traffic the ladies were constantly chatting and seemingly not paying attention to what was going on on the road while reggae music was blasting 

Wereda anchored at Marigot, May, 2010

from the car speakers. Actually, one of them, Kamenjah, was playing her own recordings, as she explained she was a reggae singer. Being a long time reggae fan I found her music very pleasing and catchy. Needless to say, by the time we arrived at Philipsburg, our knuckles were quite white. It was a very pleasant day as we walked small, busy streets and had a nice dinner at the Indian restaurant there.
After spending a week in St.Martin and as nice as it has been here we had to leave since a favorable weather  window has opened and our goal - Trinidad, was still 
several hundred miles away. On May 6, 2010 we weighed the anchor and set the course south. 

Maciek enjoying Marigot Market

Click HERE to see all pictures from Puerto Rico to St. Martin.


Click  here to see my video from   ST. MARTIN









Guadelupe

A small town of Deshaies, Guadelupe, FWI

Wereda at anchor off Deshaies, Guadelupe

From our trip to the waterfalls

 May 6, 2010.  After leaving St. Martin, our plans were to make a stop in Antigua, in part to rendez-vous with our friends from Houston - Jan and Terri on s/v Kiva. Once we've arrived at the point suitable for changing the course we have realized that with easterly winds it would take Wereda till evening before we could make the port. Instead we continued south and sailed all the way to Guadelupe. We dropped the anchor in a nice bay by a small town of Deshaies (pronounced dey-ey, or something like that). Well, it was not quite that easy. After staring the Old Cranky to motor to the anchoring spot, I realized there was no cooling water coming out of the exhaust opening. Counting on Volvos' massive iron block thermal capacity and fact that we were only idling  for relatively short time I decided to complete anchoring regardless. A renowned local mechanic checked the engine a couple of days later, and after another replacement of the impeller the cooling system was back on line. We have spent a wonderful week on Guadelupe and even rented a car to tour the Island. May 15, we raised the anchor and left friendly Guadelupe. See the the pictures by clicking on the slide show in the right panel. 
Click HERE to see all pictures from Guadelupe to Trinidad.

A video of this segment is available here:  GUADELUPE