Day Nine

This was a fairly lazy morning and most of us slept late. Then, David, Kaylynn, Alyssa, Pamela, and Jimi took a dinghy over to a snorkeling spot near the anchorage. It was a good spot with lots of fish and some caves. A huge school of small fish swam under Jimi and Kaylynn which was amazing to watch.

After breakfast and snorkeling we loaded up and went south to the town of Basse Tere to look for fresh water for showers and cooking. It was a very scenic sail and we got great pictures of the rain clouds coming through the mountains. Overall Guadeloupe was probably the most picturesque island we visited. However, the marina at Basse Tere was a ghost town on Sunday afternoon. We found someone who told us where to get water ('borrow' it actually since there was no one there to pay) but we couldn't do it because we didn't have a hose on board.

Having failed to find water at Basse Tere we sailed further south to the Saints. The Saints are a pretty little group of islands just off the southern coast of Guadeloupe which are quite popular with sailors. It was a fairly bouncy sail but it was a short passage (only about an hour) and we ended up at a very pretty harbor. In the harbor at the Saints we found a “water buoy” run by an enterprising guy named Jerome. It was a buoy with a hose attached that ran all the way to the shore. We payed 40 Euros for as much water as we wanted. The girls all showered while we filled up. It was expensive but solved our water problems. (We then had the problem of finding 40 Euros since Jerome didn't take dollars or credit cards but that's part of tomorrow's story.)

The anchorage was fairly large but only some parts of it were protected enough for quiet night's sleep. We finally anchored over near the main part of town. It was tricky to find a good spot and we ended up fairly close to shore. We dived on the anchor and it seemed to be well placed in sand (though there were rocks nearby).
Patti made steaks (and some chicken and rice for Jimi). We thought about going into town for drinks but decided we were all too tired. We did get some great pictures of the sunset. It was impressive enough that Jimi and Dave got into the dingy to get pictures of our boat with the sunset as background.