In spite of all the experience we have, or perhaps because of that, we seem to be destined to repeat some of the same problems again and again when we are cruising.

Back in 2014, during our second winter in the Bahamas, we became solidly stuck on the bottom when we tried to pull up our anchor.  I pulled and pulled and finally gave up on retrieving my anchor only to go swimming to pull it out from under the limestone ledge where it had become wedged.  It looked terrible and ultimately, I had to toss it and get another anchor.   This is what it looked like at the time when I finally got it aboard.   Pretty mangled.Well, a few days ago when we tried to anchor in the harbor off of Fort de France to visit for Carnival, we were having a terrible time anchoring and after about 5 tries, accompanied by advice for perhaps a half dozen other cruisers, we finally were firmly hooked.    However, in spite of our best efforts, we decided that we were just too close to another boat and decided to leave.

Unfortunately, as we began to retrieve our anchor, we realized that it wasn’t coming up.  I pulled and pulled on it and we moved the boat to different angles with no results.  The way that the boat came up short when the chain went taught, was really alarming.

However, finally we were able to get it back except that they shank was badly mangled, bent perhaps 30 degrees.  Deja vous all over again.  Only, this time our anchor is a stainless steel anchor that would cost about $2,500 to replace, a lot more than the one we damaged years ago.

Anyway, I shipped tthe anchor and we hightailed out of Fort de France and headed across the bay to lick our wounds.  I am hopeful that when we are in La Marin next week that there will be a shop that can address this and bend the shank back into place.  Fingers crossed.

The good news is that we were able to pull it up finally, if damaged as it was way too deep for me to dive on it and to get a diver on short notice wasn’t going to work out particularly well, I expect.

However, we moved across the harbor to a little village and took a ferry over to Ft de France yesterday to enjoy some of the festivities.  I understand from some friends that are still over there, that it’s been crazy with boat after boat coming in and trying to anchor in impossibly tight conditions.  Glad we moved.

This season has been rainier than normal and two days ago it rained just about all day.  At home when the weather calls for say, 30% chance of showers, this generally means that perhaps a third of the area will see rain.  Here it seems to mean that it will rain a third of the time.  And that day, it was more like rain hard for 10 minutes, sunny for 20 and rain again.  It’s hard to plan activities outdoors in those conditions.

Rain or shine, the view off of our stern, and it’s fairly calm here, is quite beautiful.  A golf course.   Notice the perfectly manicured mangrove hedge at the water.  They even cut little pass-throughs to allow them to get to the waterside to trim that too.   The town nearby is quaint if a bit deserted.  We went ashore to have lunch and look around a bit.  About the only action in town was a farmer’s market but there were not many places to eat.

A very pretty church, something that just about every village has here.And some very nice French Colonial architecture. Before we headed here we were in St Pierre, one of our favorite spots where we planned to spend a few days.   Unfortunately, after the first night the anchorage became very rolly (what’s new?) and we all decided to head to Fort de France.

Before we left, we did visit the Depaz distillery.    This link is interesting and gives a good feel for what it’s about.

A grand entrance to the estate.They have a very nice tasting room that has finally reopened after being closed for a few years because of the pandemic. When our friends Peter and Jane join us in March, I expect that we will be visiting it again as it’s one of my favorite and not far from the harbor.   If you are curious about this place and the history of the island and sugar, take a look at this post I did a few years ago.  I also talked a book, The Sugar Barrons, a very interesting book that’s well worth reading.

San Pierre also has a very interesting history as the once capital of Martinique and the “Paris of the Caribbean” until it was leveled by the explosion of Mt Pele that overlooks the city in 1902.    The explosion killed everyone in the vicinity as super-heated gas and volcanic ash blanketed the city, with some 30,000 dead in moments.   You can still see much of the ruins that have been preserved near the waterfront.  Nowadays, the capital is Fort de France to the south.

I did a more detailed post last season when we visited St Pierre including a discussion about the explosion that destroyed the city.

There’s been plenty going on for the last few weeks but one constant has been rolly anchorages with the exception of where we are now and Dominica.

That harbor in Dominica is huge but more of a roadstead than harbor as it’s completely open to the west.   Because of the large harbor and the popularity of Dominca with cruisers who enjoy hiking on the island, we decided to hold a special rendezvous with the Salty Dawgs and more than 25 boats showing up.  It was nearly a week of fun, barbecue parties, tours and hiking.

Dominica is one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean and the locals really appreciate it when we arrive en-mass.

Along with a number of rum punch soaked barbecues,  a group of of us spent a day planting seedling palm trees down the side of a road, about 200 of them at 20′ intervals.  They took us to a local nursery to pick them up. It seemed like there were as many of us as plants to load so we formed a bucket brigade to get them on the truck. Off we went.  It was hot work but nice to help out.  On another day, three couples hired a driver to take us around the island.   We visited a small local chocolate factory.   These are the chocolate pods all piled up on the ground.  Each pod contains many coco beans, each about the size of a large almond.  The pod, when mature, are about 8″ long.  It’s amazing how tiny these pods begin, sprouting along a branch.  They are solo and only about 1/8″ long. Then they get big but aren’t harvested until they are ripe and yellow. After the pods are opened and seeds removed, they are put in a box and covered with banana leaves to ferment for almost a week.  Then they are cleaned and spread to dry under cover.There are a bunch of other steps that include roasting in special ovens. Then they are crushed and the “hull” is separated from the good parts using air that blows off the hull and lets the heavier parts drop into a hopper. Ultimately they are ground into a smooth paste over a period of days before being melted and poured into molds. As you can imagine, this whole process smells fabulous so who can leave without buying some to take home?

Nearby, also on the estate, were many beautiful flowers.   This one looked a lot like a version of milkweed.  And, a more native version of poinsettia, n0t the highly hybridized versions that we see in the US.  And no tropical garden is complete without orchids.   This one looks like a phalaenopsis but I believe is a native orchid, perhaps oncidium. Very showy flowers on a large bush. So often looking like house plants that escaped. And breadfruit.  It is said that all the breadfruit trees in the new world are descended from those brought on the Bounty by Captain Cook. The rest of the day was spent driving around with beautiful vistas around every bend in the road. This gorge looked a bit intimidating with the gnarly roots of the trees snaking everywhere. A must-stop place in Dominica is known as Red Rock.  It’s an exposed outcropping of red sandstone, weathered over the years into something that looks more like dunes than rocks. A pretty amazing place. Just to prove were there. We visited a place where the mostly dormant volcano vents gasses through the ground.   The place, nestled in the jungle, stands out as a small area with nothing growing and a very strong smell of Sulphur.  Leading down into the crater was lush with tree ferns, some 30′ tall all around. They are just beautiful and only grow above a certain altitude. The hills were carpeted with them.Well, I guess I’ll leave it there for now and follow up with a post soon about Carnival but there is just so much that I can cram into a single post.

All and all, it’s been interesting if a bit challenging with strong winds, unsettled anchorages and, most fun of all, a damaged anchor. Hope that gets fixed soon.  At least it’s still usable if a bit gnarly to look at.

They say that cruising is generally boat repair in exotic places.   Yes, into every life a little rain must fall.  For me, I prefer the wet kind.

Sometimes it’s the other kind and I have a bent anchor to prove it.

We are here in Dominica, known by many as the “nature island”.  We made the run  from Les Saintes a few days ago to join a group of Salty Dawgs, 25 boats strong, who are gathered for a rendezvous that will last nearly a week.

Being here has been a nice respite from the constant rolling in Les Saintes, a combination of ferry traffic along with wrap-around swell from the ocean that plagued us for the nearly week long visit.

Sitting at anchor in a swell is so tiring but you really don’t know how bad it is until it stops.  Well, when a book jumped off of a shelf and landed on Brenda’s head in the middle of the night, she knew it wasn’t good.

Well, it’s stopped here, finally.  And the very sporty run here from Les Saintes was yet another reminder of how much we were looking forward to a calm anchorage.  The 20 mile run between the islands had us in 10′ waves and winds up to 30kts apparent along with two nasty squalls.  Not too much fun.

But it’s calm now and there is a group of guys here that cater to the cruisers and will take you on guided tours, which is very nice.

Dominica has many wonderful hiking trails and some will bring you to the lip of an active volcano that has so much steam rising out of it that it is known as the boiling lake.

We took a hike, brought snacks like some protein bars, and got home after dark.  For an old guy like me, that might have been a bit much. However, what an experience.

There have been nearly nightly get-togethers with free flowing rum punch and barbecue.  This evening we will be doing to a fish fry featuring lion fish caught today by some of our members.  Lion fish are native to SE Asia and are a terribly invasive species here in the Caribbean.  They think that a few fish escaped in FL years ago and have basically taken over reefs in much of the Caribbean, eating just about anything that they come on contact with that will fit in their large mouths.  It’s really terrible the toll that they have taken on native fish, destroying the balance of the reefs.

Sadly, I don’t have my scuba certification so I wasn’t able to participate in the roundup.  However, I did go on two hour hike up one of the smaller peaks.  It was moderate and very enjoyable.    As we reached the summit, I was struck by the view of the ocean.    West of the island the next landfall is, I guess, Panama,  a long way off.   Most of the islands of the Caribbean saw a lot of action as the French and English worked to gain control, primarily to secure the sugar trade that made the islands so critical to commerce.   While Dominica never saw any actual sea battles, the island changed hands between the French and English multiple times.  It is now an independent nation as of the 70s.

The view of the harbor is pretty impressive.  If you look closely, you can see Pandora. Perhaps this photo will make it easier.  She’s just to the right of center, forth boat in on the center string of moorings.  The grey boat. Our hike took us to the summit that was once a lookout for whomever was in charge at the time.  The fort, Fort Shirley, overlooking the harbor, has been beautifully restored and now is used as a conference center.  Our walk took us past some old ruins of officer’s quarters and even a room that once was used to store cannon balls.  Today the floor is still littered with small “grape shot” iron balls about 1.5′ in diameter.  I was dying to take one, but didn’t.  The strangling fig tree on one of the walls really gave the place a wild vibe and a feel that would make Indiana Jones proud.  This 6″ to 8″ fungus looks a lot like coral but isn’t.   Our guide William said that they called it “land coral”.  I get it…We saw plenty of hermit crabs and small lizards.  This one was clinging to a branch and was about the size of a lemon.  Termite mounds were everywhere.  This one, about 2′ tall.  To me it says “do not disturb”.  I was struck by the symmetry of this delicate vine climbing a small tree. Nearby, visiting for the day, was Sea Cloud, once the largest private yacht in the world when she was owned by Marjorie Merriweather Post, daughter of the founder of Postum Cereal that became General Mills.   She was fabulously wealthy and owned her when she was married to her second husband E.F. Hutton.  Among other homes, she also owned Mar-a-Lago, in Fl, home to “The Donald” these days.

Sea Cloud is now a cruise ship, and a very exclusive one at that.  With the coin, she can be your home too.  Check out her site. She frequents these waters in the winter and we have seen her many times over the years.   She’s here today with all of us “little people” in the distance. She looks much the same as she did when private.This short video gives a feel for just how opulent she is and some interesting views of the ship now juxtaposed against what she was like when she was a private yacht. Yesterday, while some in our group were gazing down into an active volcano, Brenda and I opted to go into town to get some produce at the Saturday market.   Once a week vendors come from all over to show their waresIn addition to those on the streets with colorful umbrellas, there is a pavilion where many vendors set up on tables, overflowing with all sorts of fruit and vegetables.There is also a place to purchase fresh fish.   It’s a messy business and to see guys whacking away with machetes pretty much put  Brenda off of seafood for the day.   It was a noisy splattery business to be sure.   The fist was certainly fresh, having been caught that morning and unloaded less than 100′ from the market. Right off the boat. Nothing says bony to me like a needle fish. This is a really beautiful place but never more beautiful than at sunset.  This ship, a Danish training ship, was anchored behind us with the setting sun glistening on the hull a few days ago. A short while later in the twilight, the sun sets quickly in the Caribbean, she looked different. And yes, it’s as calm as it looks and that’s good.  After a few weeks in rolly anchorages, it’s nice to be in the calm waters in the lee of Dominica.

I guess I’ll close with a shot of the view from the bow of Pandora.  Not bad if I do say so myself. First a swim and it will soon be time for sundowners.

Did I mention that it isn’t rolly?

So, here we are in one of our favorite places in the Caribbean, Les Saintes, a small archipelago of islands south of the big island of Guadeloupe.  It is a very charming and scenic spot with a lovely fleet of local fishing boats. A main street filled with places to eat.  Nearly all of the vehicles on the island are golf carts and scooters.  And some very colorful homes.  Love this one, pink with a lovely color coordinated Vespa scooter. In spite of the lovely scenery, I’ll admit that it’s a bit rolly here with the constant ferry traffic from mainland Guadeloupe bringing French tourists on holiday.  I understand that there are daily flights from Paris.

Because the water near town is so deep, more than 50′, they have put down moorings and established a designated a no-anchoring zone.   Unfortunately, if you arrive in the afternoon you aren’t likely to find an open mooring and will have to anchor in an area that is pretty exposed and wait for a mooring to open up.

This is almost always what happens to us when we arrive, so the first night is generally uncomfortable with constant rolling,  It was very windy when we arrived and the rolling was some of the worse we have ever had to endure.  Well, at least since the last time we had a “worse night” but I won’t think about that.

A friend of ours, Bill, on Kalunamoo, and a veteran, with his wife Maureen, of more than a dozen seasons in the Caribbean, put together this roll rating system, “Kalunamoo’s 7 stage guide to anchorage roll” to help describe what it can be like to be rocking and rolling at anchor.  Instead of “you had to be here to know”, this rating system, like ratings for  hurricanes and earthquakes, gives us something to compare our experiences to and make it understandable to those who weren’t there.

Sometimes we feel like we will never find a spot to anchor that is really calm and I will admit that we have both become more immune to a reasonable amount of rolling.  Fortunately, most places aren’t worse than stage 3 “good rocking sleep mode”.  However, unfortunately, it’s often stage 4 “noticeable uncomfortable roll, watch your drink.”

However, on our first night here, before we snagged a mooring closer to town, it was easily approaching stage 6 “Difficult to keep plates, drinks and footings stable! Ready to leave!” and a few times it ventured to stage 7, “WTF! We’re out of here!”

During sundowners that night, a daily ritual I’ll admit, we had to hold on to our wine glasses firmly lest they lurch off of the cockpit table. Overnight was very uncomfortable and things were flying off of shelves and pots and pans were banging against one another in the cabinets.   WTF!  It was ROLLY!

And move we did, as soon as it was light and I saw a boat heading out from the mooring field.  In fact, we weren’t the only ones that wanted to find a better spot and we ended up drag-racing with another boat, albeit at the snails pace of sailboats, as we made for the mooring field.   We won and got the better of the two moorings that opened up.  Mission accomplished!

Brenda has always been prone to motion sickness and many years ago when we were on the aircraft carrier Intrepid, in NYC on the Hudson River, the motion on the ship that day made her quite queasy.   What she didn’t appreciate is that the Intrepid doesn’t actually move at all as it is firmly stuck in the mud.  For her, it was “mind over matter” and it didn’t “matter” that the Intrepid was in the mud and she didn’t feel well.

More than thirty years later, and many less than calm nights, she’s a (little) bit more accustomed to movement and it takes a lot more to make her feel queasy.  So here we are, enjoying Les Saintes, rolling and all, where we expect to spend a week before heading to Dominica, the next island in the chain, to the south.

Ok, enough about rolling.  Let’s talk about clouds.

One of the things that I enjoy most about the Caribbean is watching clouds.  As a “card carrying member” of the Cloud Appreciation Society, out of the UK, I am always on the lookout for clouds that are “worthy” of submitting to the Society, with the hope that they will choose mine and publish it as one of their “Cloud a day” emails.

I learned about this group from the NY Times a few years ago and joined immediately.  Check out this post I did at that time.   I have always loved clouds.

The society has thousands of members and I am member #54,749.

I have gotten a number of my photos published, 4 or 5 I think.  It’s great fun to hear from them after a submission saying “we’ve chosen your cloud”.  My cloud?  Awesome!

Perhaps the most memorable photo chosen was of a “green flash”, something that we watch for every night here in the Caribbean.   I was fascinated by what they wrote to accompany my photo.  Check it out.  It was “blog worthy“.

It’s been a while since I have done any submissions but today I sent in a few.  It’s very hard to know if they are “cloud worthy” but we will see what happens next.   Fingers crossed.

I will say that being a member, and seeing 365 submissions every year, does inspire me to keep track of what is going on up in the sky and nowhere is the sky more interesting than the Caribbean.   Our son Christopher’s partner Melody is a poet and a fellow Cloud Appreciation Society member.  One of these days I’ll send her a photo and she can do a poem.  They will JUST HAVE to publish our joint submission as I doubt that they get many joint submissions.

With all this in mind, I do take a lot of cloud photos.  How about this squirrel?  Well, at least it looks like that to me. Not close enough to tell, you say?  Now do you agree?   Probably not. I am fully focused on clouds at sunrise.  No better way to start the day. Or a bit later as the sun is higher. Or in the middle of the day. Or the plume of the active volcano on Montserrat as we sailed south to Guadeloupe last week. Or the clouds rolling off of the mountaintops of Guadeloupe. And absolutely nothing beats sundowners while watching the rise of a full moon which we enjoyed yesterday evening.  Rolling or not, and it was really rolly that first night here, it’s hard to imagine a place more beautiful to appreciate clouds  than here in the Caribbean aboard Pandora.

 

It’s another beautiful day in Deshaies, Guadeloupe where we expect to spend another few days before heading farther south.

A few days ago a large cat pulled in behind us to drop the hook.  That was fine except when it came time to watch the sunset.  As the sun dipped below the horizon they obscured what turned out to be a green flash.  It would have been the second for us this season.

However, all was not lost as after dark they turned on some underwater lights.  The scene was amazing as the moon set behind them.   Thanks to Brenda’s iPhone, that takes amazing low light photos, check this view out.   The light in Pandora’s cockpit wasn’t all that bright but glows in this image.  Note that this is not altered in any way beyond the way that iPhone sees the world.   The wonders of modern photography. It’s been nice to be back in Deshaies, having visited this tiny port on our every trip south.  The village is very quaint.   I suppose that “shabby chic” describes it pretty well.

It is also the village where the filming for much of the BBC series Death in Paradise is filmed.  It’s fun to watch the trailer to see images of this very harbor.  Yet, I have not yet seen any detectives cruising the harbor in a business suit.  And, the only thing that I’ve seen killed on the beach is a cold beer.In the village there is a nice mix of places to eat out and a lovely shop, Les Cave, that sells a number of gourmet items including foie gras that you can order with a few days notice.  The shopkeeper, who greeted me this year with “I remember you.  You are on a boat”, told me that the liver comes from France but that a friend makes up the pate here in Guadeloupe.  Brenda had ordered a batch and I picked it up yesterday.  It was quite pricy but worth it.  I froze it all and we will portion it out so it will last as long as possible.  Perhaps I will take it to NYC where it is illegal and sell it.  “Hey buddy, want to buy some…”

We have been buddy boating with our friends Lynn and Mark on Roxy since Antigua as we have been for the last few years.  It’s fun to go from harbor to harbor with folks we know.  Here’s Roxy.  She’s a huge 60′ ketch and very heavy at 80,000 lbs.  By comparison, Pandora weights in at about 32,000 lbs. fully loaded.  Yesterday I went on a hike with Mark and the girls met us at a nearby beach for a late lunch.

Along our hike, we encountered some leaf cutter ants, seen as a near perfect example of a symbiotic relationship.  They being leaves back to their nest and a specific fungus grows on them.  Then they feed on the fungus and the fungus feeds on the leaves.  In a very real way they are farmers.  For more about leaf cutting ants and their unique relationship with a certain fungus, check this out.

This is the beach our hike ended on.  A beautiful spot.  You might recognize this beach from the Death in Paradise teaser. Later we walked back to the boat.  It was a very nice walk with huge trees lining the road.The other day we went to the local botanical garden, Jardin Botanique.  It’s up the mountain a short way but the walk would be treacherous as the road is one switch back after another and the drivers go like they are in a race.  Best to take the shuttle that they will send for you.

It’s sometimes hard to decide what to write about when I have already done posts about a place a number of times.  However, I really wanted to do yet another post about these wonderful gardens but this time I decided to focus on textures instead of trying to document the place itself.    Under the “been there, done that category” check out this post about the gardens from our first visit in 2017.  

Anyway, as we made our way through the gardens, I enjoyed looking for patterns in the plants.  There were so many to choose from it was hard to focus.   This season has been wetter than normal and the condition of the gardens were particularly lush.

Some of the flowers looked fake but weren’t.Palm fronds never disappoint. This succulent was not as velvety and soft as it looked.
A tangle of palm berries.
I will never quite get used to seeing “house plants” that aren’t in a house.
These flowers look like little soldiers.
More soldiers.  The soft texture of cypress. I love the koi.  They are as big as they look, some 18″ long. Every where I looked, beautiful textures. And colors. And so many plants that we think of as house plants growing outdoors and loving it. I don’t know, just a dramatic pattern…A beautiful giant fern.A not so giant epiphytic fern. Some that looked like they would be right at home in more arid places. Just love these flowers. I have a particularly soft spot in my heart for orchids and to see them growing on trees here is a treat.And who doesn’t love flamingos?Who you lookin at?Texture in water or is it an aquatic Cousin It?
You don’t have to be green.
And speaking of standing at attention.
Some flowers don’t look anything like flowers.And a view of Pandora in the harbor far below. And what post is complete without clouds?That look, upon closer inspection, like a baby duck reclining on the cloud bank.  Get it, his head with feet to the left?  Well, that’s what it looks like to me.  Not buying it?  Work with me on this. Ok, anyway, I love clouds so perhaps yet another.  Pretty dramatic day here in Deshaies, Guadeloupe.

The sun is out, the sky is blue…  And I see textures all around.

It’s a beautiful day here in Deshais Guadeloupe.  Not sure what this is all about but at daybreak yesterday morning in Antigua this unusual cloud formation appeared.  It’s not a jet trail. We made the 45 mile crossing to Guadeloupe in sporty conditions from Antigua yesterday, where Pandora had been since we arrived in mid November.   Along the way we were hit by a squall with near 30kt winds.  Brenda was not amused.

The sail was sporty, fast and we averaged over 8kts on a close reach.   As we passed Montserrat, we could clearly see the smoke from the volcano. Here is the view of the town of Deshais, Guadeloupe that greeted me this morning.Deshais is a charming little French village on the NW end of Guadeloupe.  The harbor, more of an indent in the island actually, is very tiny and the bottom drops off rather fast as you get a few hundred yards from shore.   To port is an impossibly steep cliff.The down dinghy dock is very large but sometimes the wrap-around swell from the ocean makes it unusable.  In those cases the town pulls off the wooden top of the dock to keep it from being wrecked.  It’s amazing how clear the water is.   Pandora is anchored in about 30′ of water and you can see the bottom.   This shot, off of the dock, gives a feel for the beautiful color of the water.  Hard to believe that it’s about 6′ deep here. Pretty nice beaches too.  Of course, baguettes, foie gras (not frowned upon here) and many wonderful cheeses in the stores.  Unlike stores in the US where soda, chips and, God forbid, fried pork rinds, take up multiple isles, here the mix is very different where even the smallest grocery has a great selection of pates and cheeses, not to forget loads of rum and wine choices.  I do know the word for rose, it’s rose but with a funny thing over the e.  I so wish that I had paid attention…

After a croissant and coffee, at the local boulangerie of course, we went for a short walk up the of “river”, more of a stream.  It was very peaceful.   Babbling brook. No idea what this flower is called.  In town we did a bit of provisioning.  Chicken on the hoof anyone?  What sort of dish can you make with chicks?  Chicklets?Mainstreet is very charming.  Lots of colorful shops. A lovely church. A bit of excitement.  Some sort of rescue mission going on on the hill overlooking town.  Hope it was a drill. One of the crew was dropped on a cable a moment later. Unlike in Antigua where checking into the country involves going from window 1 to window 2, window 3 and back to window 1 again and then to window 4 to pay, here you clear in at a kiosk in a T shirt shop.  One and done.  “That will be 5 euros please”, up from 3 a year ago. Inflation.

This is an important fishing port for the island and before daybreak many of the boats head out to sea, gently rocking Pandora on her anchor.    The teacup harbor where the boats are stored is protected by a large stone breakwater. To the side is another wall that lines the river that feeds into the harbor.  It’s more of a stream actually.   When the surge in the harbor is too big and they have to dismantle the top of the dock, you can bring your dink up here into calm waters.   This sign says “no swimming!”  See, I can speak French after vall. Here’s someone who decided to dock here for the day.  I fear that if I spent time alone in the Caribbean, without Brenda, this would be me in a few years.  Can you say “man bun?”  I do already have shades like his.   Somehow I doubt that they are trifocals though. And speaking of civilization.  I came upon a local tourist office, set up to give information to folks off of a small cruise ship that was visiting the harbor today.  They had lovely flower arrangements on the table and I asked if there was somewhere I could purchase some flowers for Brenda.

The lovely ladies offered me their flowers so as not to let Brenda go wanting.  It was such a nice gesture.  “Here, let me yank your lovely arrangement apart.  Quick, look away.  Run!”  Not wanting to seem to grabby.  “Sorry Bob… too late. You are grabby”.  I asked one of them to pick for me.   Excellent choices.   And, delivered with a smile! Quick!  Back to Pandora.  Can’t let them wilt.  Well trained after 50 years…

Some late afternoon entertainment from a small sloop.  It was plenty windy and these boats don’t have internal ballast.  Notice how the boom is bending.  They are full keel and this one looks like it was brand new.  A gust of wind.  These boats are very heavily canvased.  Everyone hike out!Like most days, a late afternoon squall.  Rainbow!And about 20 minutes later.  Rainbow #2.  It landed right on the church.  “Jesus, look at that!”  No, I take it back.  That was bad taste. What a beautiful place.  It’s going to be hard to leave.  Well, unless we drag in one of those strong wind gusts that Deshais is known for.  Then I’ll have to add Honduras to the list.

Tomorrow, what to do?  So many choices…

I love Antigua but, well, for the moment, I guess it’s love the one we are with.  Guadeloupe is just so today.   Well, for today anyway.

I do love those baguettes though.