"It was on the wettest and greyest of mornings, that we finally left the UK to return to French Polynesia." was the opening line of my blog last May when we flew back to re-join Celtic Star in French Polynesia on May 4th 2022. At that time we were planning one step at a time due to our plans having been thwarted so many times before. If we made it to Fiji we thought we might need to sell the boat in Australia, but that didn't happen! We sailed onwards and westwards and finished our circumnavigation in Rodney Bay, St Lucia on 15th April 2023. Since leaving St Lucia on January 11th 2019 we have sailed 28,725nm on the circumnavigation back to St Rodney Bay. The time on board, excluding our 16 month break back in the UK was 620 days. Of course we have added thousands of miles getting to St Lucia before the World Rally start and our now up to a total of 35262 since we left our home port on 5th July 2019.
Now we are we are preparing for our North Atlantic passage departing from English Harbour, Antigua on May 4th 2023, I am not superstitious, but that date worked out well for us before! Our current weather conditions here in the Antilles are still extremely wet and can be quite grey and dull too. We have been getting intermittent tropical downpours that sometimes last for hours, but the temperatures remain at around 30 degrees Celsius making it very hot and humid. Our next passage is Eastwards which will be a novelty we realised that we haven’t been in that direction on Celtic Star for about four years! Well our lives are full of novelty and that’s what travelling is all about. The benefit of taking your own home with you is the ability to retreat into one’s own environment of familiarity and comfort when sensory overload happens.
We have had a mellow few weeks cruising northwards calling at Dominica, Guadeloupe and finally Antigua. In each of these places customs and immigration has to be done in and out and the offices and officials need to be located as well. Even the “do it yourself” check in in Guadeloupe was housed in a locked office with a number to call and an official who took the form from us to stamp, sign and of course take payment. We actually anchored overnight in the South of Martinique, on our way to Dominica but we left early, didn’t go ashore so we didn’t do all the formalities.
We enjoyed the sailing for the first week but then the winds died and for the final week we motored between anchorages. We had an interesting bus ride with the locals in Dominica after we had explored the colourful capital town of Rousseau. Here are the line of buses!
Not understanding that the bus we got onto was going all the way to the end of the island the driver got very annoyed when we said we wanted to get off about halfway along. He charged us double and moaned about the tourists so much that the other passengers took pity on us and told him to “ let the white people off”. Grateful for their support we hurried back to the boat and moved northwards to anchor in Portsmouth Bay.
From here we were collected by a dive boat and explored some fabulous underwater reefs full of colourful corals, sponges, fish and eels. After a couple of meals on board we enjoyed tuna and frites at a cafe on the beach and retired to bed early ready for our thirty mile sail up to Guadeloupe. Saturday 22nd April saw us anchored outside Rivière de Sens near Basse Terre which was all closed apart from a bar or two because it was Saturday afternoon. Guadeloupe is a French Territory, we were now back in Europe so instead of Eastern Caribbean Dollars we reverted to Euros. We waited until Sunday morning before clearing in and collecting our hire car from outside the Boulangerie which was open and had a line of customers waiting for baguettes and croissants! We had a wonderful day out exploring Guadeloupe which is shaped like a butterfly, two different islands joined by a narrow isthmus which we crossed briefly onto La Grande Terre but found it rather industrial and commercial so headed back to the lush green mountains on Basse Terre.
Our first stop was high up into the jungle to visit the Carbets waterfalls. The paths were well laid out and signposted and it was a little busy because it was a Sunday, but we really enjoyed being back in jungle fauna and flora with large leaf creepers and strangler figs, dense growth of tall trees and the insistent background noise of tree frogs. This is something akin to hundreds of clinking bottles that due to enormous numbers eventually resonates with some sort of tune!
After stopping at the Grand Etang, a big lake, we were lucky enough to see a hummingbird sitting in its little green coracle like nest. Although we see plenty of them flitting about the blossoms and blooms, I have never seen one sitting still and seeing just how long their beaks are. Half way down the hill we stopped for lunch at a delightful looking restaurant and being Sunday there was a three course menu, which is a set meal. I did try to get vegetarian food, but my efforts were lost in translation so, whilst we had a pleasant stop and a good salad starter and banana crumble desert, it was not our best culinary experience.
We did have a delicious meal at a lovely restaurant called Le Rocher de Malendure situated on a rocky outcrop looking out at the sunset over the Cousteau Marine Reserve. It was a perfect place to have dinner after two fabulous dives in the Cousteau Reserve. A brilliant day all round. The menu had a French Polynesian influence and we thoroughly enjoyed being transported back to Tahiti with dishes such as Poisson Cru and fish in vanilla sauce. As expected the diving was superb, though naturally busy, it being one of the world diving top spots. There was even an underwater statue of Jaques Cousteau, who revised underwater breathing equipment to its current, easy to use, format; SCUBA; self contained underwater breathing apparatus. Because the park is a protected area, all the fish were bigger, the crabs were enormous and we were lucky enough to to see a huge Green Moray and a tiny orange frog fish, amongst a plethora of colourful underwater life. Truly superb.
A brief meeting with our old shipmates, Pete and Bee on Jubilate Mare was pleasant but odd without Bruno who had been their crew for the last two years. They delivered our sail back to us after having it valeted and repaired, for which we are grateful. It is essential we have a spare sail ready for our next ocean passage when we are sailing independently. Our tracker is still live at http://my.yb.tl/CelticCruising if you want to follow our homewards trip.
Before we left Guadeloupe we headed to a small bay outside the lovely town of Deshais. Here Richard and I were delighted to find the Boulangerie just opposite the dingy dock and replenished baguette and cake supplies before walking up hill to visit the delightful Botanical Gardens.
These were full of colourful plants, gorgeous orchids, plus bright coral coloured flamingos and parrots.
The only drawback was the unceasing torrential rain. We tried sheltering to let it pass but the lessening cascade was a taunt to lure one out from cover before the next downpour. We got drenched and had to wait until we were exiting the gardens before the clouds passed over, even the parrots were under cover!
The following morning we set off for Antigua, passing the island of Montserrat which we had visited in 2008 with the family. In the 1990s the volcano erupted causing significant damage to the south of the island including the capital city of Plymouth which was smothered in lava. The Beatles' manager George Martin's legendary AIR Studios was also ruined firstly by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and then the series of volcano eruptions of the Nineties. Throughout the Eighties, everyone from the Rolling Stones and the Police to Elton John, Duran Duran, Dire Straits and Black Sabbath travelled there to record era-defining albums. In 2008 we also visited the studio and noted tape cassettes lying abandoned on the floor, quite spooky. The city reminded me of a modern Pompeii, although the area was successfully evacuated so there were no morbid, cowering, ash coated figures to be seen. As we sailed past 15 years later it still seemed to be fairly active, pouring steam into the blue “pavilions of heaven” (Shelley).
The wind was light so we motor sailed the forty miles north to our final Caribbean destination Nelson's Dockyard, Antigua. This 18th century historical site started to be renovated in 1947 by the Nicholson family who moved into the purser' house on the dock and started a yacht charter company. The Nicolson name remains well known in yachting circles for their yacht designs as The officers quarters were still being used in the 1950’s but Nelson had a fleet based in this natural harbour to protect British ships carrying sugar and rum to America from the French Privateers.
Not only have we carried thousands of pounds worth of paper charts, as well as electronic ones, but we have also had to carry a large bundle of courtesy flags for all the countries we visit. In South Africa this didn’t get changed for two months but here we change the flag every time we visit a new island as well as checking in and out! After having problems buying courtesy ensigns for our next destination on our last trip in 2007/8 we purchased a roll of flags from the World Cruising Club before setting off in 2019 and have added our own previously used one since heading north from St Lucia.
On the way to Antigua Richard managed to catch a small tuna which was lucky because we haven’t been able to fish for a couple of weeks due to the large rafts of Sargasso weed which are becoming problematic throughout the area. The weed clogs propellers and blocks harbours and feels unpleasant if you swim near it. It wasn’t hard to indulge Anna by producing her favourite dish, sushi, complete with homemade sushi gori.
After the end of rally parties we have enjoyed quiet times on board playing cards, board games and spending time together reading or solving crosswords. Anna is also a keen diver and for our last dive in the Caribbean we all went on our first night dive. My nervous trepidation as we left the dock in the dive boat was offset by a glorious sunset and we couldn’t have asked for a better experience. Thank you Louis and Dive Carib for introducing us to the fabulous underwater world at night and providing an informative dive with good quality kit. We saw lots of Lobsters, Spanish Slipper Lobsters, Brittle Stars and Sea Urchins and many other creatures which are all much more active at night. The corals and sponges glowed in the torch light and we were lucky enough to see a sting ray and a turtle too. We have seen plenty of turtles swimming about the boat in anchorages, but it is always fun to see one under water and it added to the amazing experience. The following day we hired a car to take Anna to the airport for her evening flight. We did a small tour of the island but the sugar mills museum we had hoped to see were closed so we took a quick picture through the fence before we headed to Devil’s Bridge.
Devil's Bridge is a limestone pavement on the far western edge of a long peninsular which was interesting to see. The roads were dreadful, big pot holes and rough kerbs and ramps and even the better paved roads threw up random speed humps just when I had reached an exhilarating 30mph! I was driving an automatic car for the first time so it was all a bit challenging. I managed to drive down some small roads until we found a local restaurant where we had a tasty lunch of fish, salad with rice and peas plus with hot sauce!
The eastern side of the island seemed quite scrubby and dry, there were some beach resorts but they seemed quiet although the airport was busy, so maybe it was change over day! The main places to visit are the historic sites of Nelson’s Dockyard, English Harbour where we were based.
Richard was delighted to find the original bakery was still open and the veggie pasties were as good as he remembered.
The other buildings are all in use including the modern sail loft which was a saw mill, the original sail loft has only its pillars remaining.
We enjoyed reminiscing at Pillars which we went into after our first transatlantic crossing in March 1990. We also discovered in the Dockside Bar, to our delight, our previous boat name, “Fuerte” and the children’s names were still transcribed on the ceiling from our time spent here in 2008.
With my brother Michael who visited us and stayed on board Fuerte for a week.
The dockyard was very busy when we arrived because it was the start of Antigua sailing week, which is a big regatta. It is a cosmopolitan event but there was an overriding sound of British accents in the bars and restaurants, which was almost a culture shock after a year away! It felt more like a cross between Kensington and Cowes than Caribbean! That and the torrential rain seemed to be a good preparation for our homecoming! There is an old fortress on the hill above the harbour called Shirley Heights and every Thursday and Sunday is party night, so we hopped in a taxi to experience our final event in Antigua and the Caribbean islands. We enjoyed the mix of locals and holiday makers having fun at the sunset BBQ and party and the view and sunset were spectacular over Freeman’s Bay where Celtic Star is the third boat anchored in from the left. Nelson's Dockyard is to the right and Falmouth Harbour is at the back! The British were fond of re using familiar place names!
The buffet meal was tasty and there were two excellent bands providing great entertainment. A really high energy steel band followed by a brilliant band that encouraged everyone to sing and dance along to well known covers that kept the party spirit high.
We danced and sang and I looked out to sea and up at the stars and it might have been the effect of the rum punch but I felt on top of the world. A world I have physically sailed all the way around in my own boat. A feat I am still taking on board! Pun intended! A late night swim and an early morning snorkel to the nearby rocks took care of any after effects of the punch and party and we maximised our swimming experiences over our last few days here. By the time we arrive in the Azores the water will feel cooler than we are used to.
The next day was back to reality of boat chores and maintenance pre ocean departure. We had our rig checked in Rodney Bay, and managed to swap our old outboard engine (needs some repairs) for the masthead check up. The boat season is ending in the Antilles and the boat services were visiting the WARC fleet boats to see if any work was needed so all parties were happy with the arrangement. Our solar panel charging connection sprung a fault the and Richard spent time in the lazarette trying to fix it. In the end we needed to buy a new solar charge controller which sorted out the problem without denting the bank account too much. Our new crew arrives on 2nd May and we have provisioned and are ready to go again but not without a Trinidadian veg roti from Sue's Roti Shack!
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