Back in France

Mon March 10 5:45pm Those of you that know me know my feelings about the French. Well we arrived at Basse Terre about 10 pm after an frustrating overnight from St Thomas. Our weather report (of course it's a French software program) said we would have NE winds for Saturday and Sunday. French never could get anything right...more east than NE...this meant that we could not sail comfortably. We had to sail closer to the wind( boat heels, a lot more waves over the bow...lots of pounding) and at times not even going the right direction. Took longer than expected. I had 2 options for stopping, but the east winds snuffed them out. Joyce woke me at 2 am for watch change. About 4 am I noticed a squall on the radar. (these small intense rain storms show up on the radar like a cloud) I usually try and miss them if possible..sometimes they chase you, damn them...well I reefed everything thing down about 30 seconds before the wind went from 14 knots to 30 knots ..and from a different direction. I turned and ran with the wind(a lot safer and more comfortable) for 15-20 min. This was a morning squall picture....


Then the rain came down...1 way to wash the salt off the boat. Wind speed 0...started the stinkpot (engine) and motored in the right direction...15 min later the wind comes back and we are back sailing. By Sunday noon it was evident that we had to go to Guadaloupe. I decided to anchor off of Basse Terre . I had been there a few times and there was a place you could anchor out. We motor sailed the rest of the afternoon. I decided to use this engine time to equalize the batteries. This is where you overcharge the batteries to burn the sulfate of the plates. This takes place when you discharge them deeply on a regular basis and don not charge them back to 100% each time. Well the batteries were starting to act like the last batch we swapped out back in January. 2 hours later and we recovered over 120 amp hrs, about 20 % of the usable capacity...happy battery, happy Capt. We slowly motored into the anchorage....hmmm no boats. Road now had street lights. Depth 290 ft...150 yards off the beach...supposed to get shallow quick to about 15 ft so we could anchor. I had Joyce up on the bow with the Q-light...2 million candlepower...closer to the beach...and now it's a beach...don't remember that....Joyce spots a series of floats along the beach...swimming area...seems the Frenchies had decided they wanted a beach and made one...about a mile long...so no anchorage. I decided to sail over to the Saints...a group of islands that belongs to France...been there before too...I must admit that the Saints is one of the nicest spots in the Caribbean. Arrived at my favorite spot at 12 midnight. Dropped the hook in a deep part of the anchorage (50 ft) and called it a night.

Joyce was up early....me about 9am. We decided to motor the boat over to town and see if there was internet. Yep...seems this 1 company out of Antigua got smart. They have installed strong wireless stations on most of the islands in the lower Caribbean. Sign up for a month and you can connect at any of 8 or so islands for 50 bucks...not bad when you remember the place $25 a day back in the USVI. Well we connected ...started our Graboid..to get our movies and worked on our email. I told Joyce there was no use going in after noon since the Frenchies lunch goes from 12-2pm. We put the dink in and motored in about 3pm. Lot's of people...3 big ferries tied to the town dock...but some of the stores were still closed....hmmm...Island Time Frenchie style is 12- 330 for lunch. Do they ever work a full day?? I'll leave the rest to Joyce...fingers tired. Oh yea...has taken me almost 1 hr to do this...when I spell checked...all hell broke loose...since we are in France...yes Gaudeloupe IS France..Google is in French....what's this world coming to...Google is an American company..we speak English..so should the damn French when using OUR products. Time for me to have a drink and chill out..