Deshaies to Iles des Saints to Portsmouth, Dominica

Roger here. Lene will follow with photos of what we saw, did and ate on land. This posting describes our sails between ports and the anchoring changes within ports.

The passage from Deshaies to Isles des Saintes (which politically is part of the island nation of Guadeloupe -- hence no customs process) was like two different trips. The first half was along the west coast of Guadeloupe, not far off shore. It reminded me of Long Island Sound sailing --

light and variable winds. The wind was mostly behind us so we unfurled the Genoa and used the wind when available and combined it with the motor when it became too light. Surprisingly, because the real prevailing wind was indeed from the east -- our port side, and we were sailing in the lee of the big island, we had north-westerlies that filled our sail, for a while. We saw the huge former volcanoes, now lushly green, with their tops in the clouds.

Once past the southwest tip of the island the winds were strong from 18 to 20 knots, and from the east. Having been warned via VHF radio of this change by Bill Donaldson, on Lucille, we had shifted from Genoa to small jib and used it to stabilize the boat while motoring the five miles to the north entrance of The Saints, as they are called.

But then the problem became to find a secure anchorage. Of course we would be on the west side of a land mass. But the problem, as we have been learning, is that winds eddy around in the lee of such land masses, making it difficult or impossible to predict from where they will be blowing. The main island of the group, Terre-de-Haut, has the island group's only town, Bourg, on a large bay with 20 to 40 foot deep water near town.
However, our advance party, Lucille, reported that this anchorage (mouillage in French) was full of boats, making the danger of them hitting each other as they veered, too great for us. Those at the left side of the photo are in 50 or 60 feet of water and hence need a lot of room around them. The open space in the middle leading to the dock in town is the ferry channel -- no anchoring permitted.

Another compounding difficulty is that the water gets very deep very fast as you get away from the shoreline. The same steep slope of the land upward from sea level, is continued downward under the water. With strong winds one wants to have five times as many feet of chain out from the bow of the boat to the anchor, as the depth of the water where the anchor is dropped, so that the anchor will be unlikely to drag along the bottom. So if the water is 30 feet deep, as it was on the west side of Ilet A Cabrit, (I think it means "Island of Hills") pictured below, (notice how closely the boats

anchored are hugging its shore), this means 150 feet of chain. The shelf of 30 foot deep water is sometimes only 100 feet from the shoreline. With 150 feet of chain out, if the wind blows toward the shore, you are on the rocks! Lucille successfully anchored there, using two anchors set at angles, to hold her in place. Another boat had to be kedged off the rocks. We poked around in this area but eventually tried a third alternative, behind Pain de Sucre


(Sugarloaf in English) and there we found the area close to the rock full, but lots of room at the other end of the bay, where we spent three nights. A local artist's view of Pain de Sucre is shown. The house at the right is way too large, out of scale, relative to the rock. She did lovely shirts of good quality cotton with silk screens of such views but at 50 Euros, too expensive for my tastes.

We did move up near the big rock (next photo) when other boats left, but interrupted our viewing of The Changeling on DVD at 10:30 pm, when we noticed that the wind had changed putting us too near the rock and hauled anchor and re-anchored near where we had spent the first night.

Today, being the best weather day of the next three, less than 20 knots expected except add five for gusts, we checked out of Guadeloupe customs and sailed to the big Prince Rupert Bay, a few miles south of the north tip on the west coast of Dominica, site of the town of Portsmouth, where we checked into customs, took a $10US mooring and turned on the internet. We sailed with one reef in the main and the small jib in 18 knots of wind, with half an hour at 25 knots , except for the last few of the 25 miles, when the winds dropped to 15 and less. It took us five hours. The boat is again encrusted with salt, but the rains, several times per day, will wash it away.