{"id":577,"date":"2014-12-10T21:52:26","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T21:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=577"},"modified":"2014-12-16T11:46:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T11:46:39","slug":"how-green-was-my-valley-guadeloupe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=577","title":{"rendered":"How Green Was My Valley (Guadeloupe)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_1538<\/a>Green, gorgeous, Guadeloupe. It’s hard to imagine there can be so many different shades of green. It was an instant love affair when we went ashore to the quiet little backwater of Deshaies (pronounced \u201cDay-ay\u201d \u2013 gotta love those silent French consonants -and if you imagine putting a G\u2019 in front of it, then you\u2019d sound just like a true blue Queenslander!) We decided to by-pass St Kitts & Nevis and Montserrat, partly because of our need to push on to Martinique, but also because there were few suitable anchorages on those islands that would be comfortable in the current NNE swell. So instead we chose to do an overnight passage from St Barts to Guadeloupe (approximately 120NM). The weather guru in these parts is Chris Parker, who does a daily weather forecast on the HF radio and also sends through daily emails. He seems to get it right most of the time and as a sailor himself he\u2019s a little more attuned to the needs of the cruising community. His forecast was for east-southeast winds 12-15kts meaning another windward beat, but there doesn\u2019t seem to be much escaping that until we get to \u2018the top of the hill\u2019 at Martinique. Despite a bit of a slow start where we needed the motor, that\u2019s pretty much what we got \u2013 beautiful night sailing with an almost full moon. Approaching Monserrat there\u2019s a very big lump of rock called Redonda which used to owned by the British for phosphate mining but is now abandoned. It\u2019s over 1000ft tall so we were careful not to run into it (!) but it looked spectacular as the dawn\u2019s rays hit it.<\/p>\n

\"Redonda<\/a>
Redonda at dawn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We were hoping to sail down the east side of Monserrat but a large approaching squall made us reconsider \u2013 going round the other side seemed a prudent choice!<\/p>\n

\"We<\/a>
We didn’t want to play with this one!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sailing past Monserrat was spectacular \u2013 it\u2019s still an active volcano, last erupting in 2010, and there\u2019s a maritime exclusion zone on the south part of island, mostly to protect boats from being covered in ash I suspect, as there\u2019s currently no imminent danger of another eruption. It was quite a sobering sight to sail past the remains of the capital, Plymouth, which was mostly destroyed in the latest eruption, and to see the massive lava flows and boulders spewed from the summit.<\/p>\n

\"Monserrat<\/a>
Monserrat from a distance, with ash trailing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The spectacular Monserrat volcano, still pumping<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Lava<\/a>
Lava beds cover the old capital, Plymouth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once we cleared the southern end of Montserrat we had a great romp to windward, maintaining a good 8-9kts even when close-hauled. Who said cats don\u2019t go to windward? But as always seems to happen, 10NM from our destination the wind died and we ended up motoring in to Deshaies a little after lunch on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"Deshaies<\/a>
Deshaies waterfront<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Checking in is easy \u2013 just find the Pelican souvenir shop and caf\u00e9 on the main street and use their computer tucked in a corner to fill out your details. In my mangled French I asked if we needed to come back to check-out and she said no, no need, the one form is all we needed. Now that\u2019s civilized! Deshaies is very quaint with lots of interesting little bars and restaurants, many serving creole cuisine. We enjoyed a beer at a waterfront bar overlooking the bay, feeling very happy to have found a little piece of paradise that for once wasn\u2019t too touristy.<\/p>\n

\"Ahh,<\/a>
Ahh, paradise!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The beach bar at Deshaies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"the<\/a>
the laid back quaintness of the bars and restauarants<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Although<\/a>
Although we never did figure out what this enclosure on the hill was. Any guesses?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next day we sailed a little further south to Pigeon Island, home to the Cousteau Underwater Park, a prime diving and snorkeling site.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The mainland near Pigeon Island<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our dive compressor is still out of action (awaiting parts that should have arrived in St Martin but never did \u2013 we\u2019re now counting on our knight in shining armour, Geoff Sherman, to bring the necessary part with him in January) so we had to be content with snorkeling. As soon as we dropped into the water we discovered we\u2019d acquired our own bottom-cleaning team, two ramoras that were very keen to hoover up the organisms on our hull!<\/p>\n

\"Ramora<\/a>
Ramora cleaning service<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We put our kayaks to good use, paddling out to the island with our snorkeling gear, but the snorkeling itself was a big let-down due to the surge from the big swells. Oh well, at least we got some exercise, and the sunset over Pigeon Island was very lovely.<\/p>\n

\"Pigeon<\/a>
Pigeon Island at sunset<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tomorrow we\u2019ll do the short hop to the Isles de Saintes, also part of Guadeloupe but just a little further south, and supposedly well worth a visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Green, gorgeous, Guadeloupe. It’s hard to imagine there can be so many different shades of green. It was an instant love affair when we went ashore to the quiet little backwater of Deshaies (pronounced \u201cDay-ay\u201d \u2013 gotta love those silent French consonants -and if you imagine putting a G\u2019 in front of it, then you\u2019d … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “How Green Was My Valley (Guadeloupe)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-svtoucan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6B46t-9j","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":581,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions\/581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}