After we left Martinique at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon so we could reach Guadeloupe in the morning. We were warned by Eric and Karin that there were some acceleration winds in-between Martinique and Dominica but we saw that it wasn’t going to be “that bad” on 10th May.
When we left the wind wasn’t so strong and there weren’t any waves. We had perfect weather. At around 7, I went to sleep so I could take the night shift but when I woke up everything was a different story.The wind had gotten stronger as well as the waves. It was like we were in a pot of boiling water but at least we were doing an average of 6 knots. This lasted for another 2 hours until we went behind Dominica. Everything had calmed down suddenly, however, we knew that this would only last for a couple of hours. As soon as we left from Dominica’s influence, it was the same story: strong wind and waves. We thought it would only for an hour or two until we reach the islands in front of Guadeloupe but that wasn’t the case.
When we reached Rivière-Sens the wind hadn’t died down, making us wonder how to safely wrap the jib up. We finally managed to take down our sails and then called the marina who told us to come in. We had first asked if we can used the fuel station which they said “yes” but there was somebody already there so we called them again to tell them about our change of plan. They finally showed us where to park. We went there with all the lines and the fenders ready but the other boat (the one next to us) didn’t have any fenders so the bow did go towards them and touch them but there wasn’t any damage. The guy from the marina then reminded us that we had to tie the bow to the buoy 5 metres (16.4 feet) away, meaning that we would have had to untie the stern because the lines were too short. But luckily our neigbours, who we had nearly hit had a dinghy in the water which they used to tie our lines to the buoy. We thanked them and wished them fair wind because they were about to go anchoring in the north.
After we had completed all the formalities we went to the nearest restaurant we found which resulted in being Indian. We were so glad as we hadn’t had Indian food since we cooked some in Spain so we went there ordering curries and samosas.
We then had a walk in the village, not realising that it was siesta but we found a grocery where we brought a watermelon from to have later in the afternoon. The village was quite different from Martinique. As the island was bigger, there was more unused space left in its natural form. There were a lot of places were you could have walks in the wilderness and it was absolutely beautiful to see everything enveloped in green. However, the only downside was that during the 6 days we had stayed there, it rained at least once a day. Unfortunately we only stayed in Guadeloupe for less than a week and hence didn’t have time to rent a car and see the island.
We also met new people there: a couple who just started out sailing and were chartering a boat and another couple (quite experienced) who met one another whilst saying in Greece on their own boats. When they decided to be together, they sold one boat and crossed the Atlantic on another. They told us about their plans to go to the Pacific by sailing the US waterways.
We left Guadeloupe on May 15th directly to the Dominican Republic.
