December 30-January 3

“We were once more upon the ocean, where sky and water meet.” –Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast

It was with trepidation that we set off from St. Croix to Guadeloupe.  It was our first overnight passage since “The Big One” from North Carolina to St. Thomas, and I was not yet completely recovered enough to forget the pain.  Chris is different.  He loves passages.  He needs very little sleep when running on the adrenaline that he gets from sailing a boat.  The only thing that gets me to give up sleep willingly is the prospect of dancing all night.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Remember that statement when we get to Dominica…

 

 

Our passage was rough and rolly and I felt seasick for some of it.  We ran into a number of squalls as we passed by the island of Montserrat.  Montserrat has an active volcano, and if you get too close, floating ash will land on your boat.  Not cool.  We managed to rally for a 2 minute New Year’s Eve celebration.  Don’t I look thrilled?  Chris took pity on me and didn’t wake me up for my night watch.

Note: Bonjour!  I have worked ridiculously hard to make this website a positive and inspiring place for people to visit.  Some visitors are living vicariously through us, others are remembering their own adventures, and many are just reading along to make sure we haven’t sailed off the edge of the world.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading.  However, I must beg your pardon for the next few islands.  If I reported our activities in the French West Indies with only cheerful and positive anecdotes, there would be two problems.  First, it would be a very, very short post.  Second, you would miss out on hearing about some of our more interesting, albeit frustrating adventures.  So, we are taking a pause on the “unicorns and rainbows” approach.  Be prepared for a bit of complaining, a little bitterness, and a peppering of “Are you kidding me??!!”.  But I promise you this: you will laugh!!!!

Deshies (prounounced Day-Hay), Guadeloupe

“No Soup For You!”

We arrived early in the morning at Deshies, Guadeloupe.  s/v Anything Goes, who made the passage from Virgin Gorda, miraculously arrived just hours before us.  It was quite a coincidence.

After some quick New Year wishes and fish reports, Wendy and I dinghied in to find the customs check-in, which was supposedly in an Internet Café.  Le Pelican was closed, and the few people we saw couldn’t help us because they only spoke French.  Hmm.  We gathered up the kids and the boys and came back onto land to try a hike that we had read about.  In the coming hours, it would be questioned just WHO read about it and forced all of our poor kids to have this miserable experience.  Let’s just say that neither Wendy nor I are willing to push each other under this bus.

 

Personally, with the exception of getting separated at one point, I thought it was a great hike.  Instead of a trail, we just followed the Riviere Deshies up the hill.  We saw intrepid little ants carrying giant leaves on their backs to build something.  We climbed over rocks, looked at the lush foliage, got our feet wet, and enjoyed being outdoors after being on the boat for so long.  Once we got to the road at the top of the river, we realized just how far we had climbed.  It hadn’t felt like so much climbing and we enjoyed sweeping views and quaint residential areas on the easy walk down.

As we enjoyed said sweeping views, someone casually asked, “Hey.  Where’s Patronus?”  Hmmm.  Not there.  Chris and I left Wendy and Craig with all the kids and ran the rest of the way down the hill, across the road, onto the dinghy, and out to the harbor.  We saw Patronus, but not where we had left her!

 

The anchor had dragged.  It was our first experience with this and we were very lucky.  The folks on the boat next to us had noticed we were dragging and had reset our anchor and tied a line from our boat to theirs as an extra precaution.  We pulled the anchor, found a better spot, and reset it.  This time, we dove on it, which means that we swam out to the anchor and dove down to the bottom to make sure it was set securely.  We were so tired that morning when we had arrived after our long passage that we had gone right to sleep and forgot to dive on the anchor when we woke up.  Lesson learned.

 

How many Americans does it take to fill out our names and passport numbers on a french keyboard?

The next day, we finally found the customs office open.  Apparently, the islands of the French West Indies like to take a lot of “breaks”.  They are open for a few hours in the morning.  Maybe.  Then everything shuts down from about 12 till 4.  Give or take.  Then they might open up for another hour or two.  We struggled to fill out the customs form, which was on the computer.  The keyboard was French, so we had to hunt and peck for every letter.  Did everyone else but me know that the French have a completely different keyboard?

We consulted each other and realized that none of us knew more than a few words in French.  We knew that it helped to at least try, so we did that during our entire stay in the French West Indies.  The owner of the Café was not very helpful as we struggled to figure out why we couldn’t find “USA” or “America” in the “Citizenship” area.  That’s because it was listed under “E” for “États-Unis d`Amérique”.  Were we supposed to know that?

We looked at each other after about twenty minutes at the computer, still typing in the names and passport numbers for all the kids.  It was then that our new catchphrase was born: “This would be a lot easier if we didn’t have all these kids…”  Being as both families are doing this trip entirely BECAUSE of the kids, it’s funny to sometimes throw that out there when things are particularly difficult or hairy.  Imagine trying to catch a bus with 4 adults and 6 kids.  Imagine trying to keep track of 10 people at Carnival.  Imagine racing your 47’ sailboat with a couple of 6-7 year olds needing to use the potty.  Imagine pretty much anything.  These are all good times to say, “This would be a lot easier if we didn’t have all these kids….”  It makes us laugh every time and reminds us that we are happy that it ISN’T easier.  We are happy that we have this incredible opportunity to show our children the world: expanding their minds and opening their hearts.  Even if all the retired cruisers are laughing at us from their cockpits as they read their books and enjoy their afternoon cocktails…

At least the kids enjoyed the store.  They purchased a few small items with their own money while I tried to ask the store owner where we could get some crepes.  If we are going to be in a French country, I’m a gonna get me some crepes.

Me: “Do you know a restaurant that serves crepes?” (note that I pronounced it like we do in the US: crapes)

Store Owner: “Crepes? No, no crepes.”

Me: “The restaurant across the street has a sign that says “Crepes” but it’s closed.”

Store Owner: “Crepes?  Crepes?”

Me (thinking): What the hell kind of a french dude is this who has never heard of crepes?

Store Owner: “Oh!!!!!!!!  Crepes!!!!!!!!! (pronouncing it: crrrrrrrrrrrreps)  No.  No crrrrrrrrreps here.”

Me: (thinking): When are we leaving Guadeloupe?

 

So we left the Internet Café but I was convinced that the owner must be mistaken.  There must be crepes here somewhere.  So all ten of us started to stroll down the deserted street (as it was now noon) looking for a place to eat lunch.  You know.  ‘Cause it was LUNCH-time.  Nothing.  We couldn’t find an open store or restaurant anywhere.  We got to the end of the village and rested awhile on a cute little balcony overlooking the harbor.  Wendy and I took some nice photos of the quaint village, which had definite European overtones to the architecture and colors but that Caribbean “haven’t been fixed or painted in 20 years” quality that makes for great pics.

Everyone was starting to get a little hungry and cranky.  Ok.  I was starting to get hungry and cranky.  But I warned everyone that my blood sugar was starting to plummet and that I needed a g&$-damned crrrrrrrrepe as soon as freaking possible.  We saw a restaurant a little further towards the end of the village and dragged ourselves there with little hope.  Chris and a few of the kids went in to see if we could get a table.  A minute later, they came out and Chris looked dumbfounded.  He told us that the owner said that unless one person in our party spoke french, we couldn’t come to her restaurant.  We all stared at him like he had obviously misunderstood her.  But then she came out of the restaurant and leaned in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, and glaring at us until we got off the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.  Yes, folks.  She was serious.  No soup, or crrrrrrrreps, for us.

We walked away in shock.  Is that legal here?  We quickly decided that it didn’t matter if it was or wasn’t.  We weren’t getting served.  We continued to walk around and saw many more restaurants: all closed.  By the time I started swaying back and forth as a precurser to fainting, we found a supermarket and bought a hunk of bread and some cheese.  We sat on a retaining wall and thankfully ate in silence.  Within a short time, a French woman (the older kind, with the gray-haired bun, the long skirt, and a long, white apron) came up behind the gate near the wall.  She was wringing her hands and saying something but we didn’t understand her.

Us: “No Francese” (then we looked at each other, not sure if that’s even the right way to say “No French”).

Her: (wringing her hands and pointing to the retaining wall) “String of french words that were getting MORE and MORE FRANTIC AND ANNOYED!!!!!”

Us: “I think she wants us to get off the retaining wall.”

We didn’t even realize that the retaining wall was a part of her property.  It was just some dilapidated, crumbling piece of concrete on the side of the road.  We weren’t really expecting a Welcome Wagon when we arrived, but this was getting ridiculous.  We finished our bread and cheese on the steps of the village church, thinking that any minute, the French God was going to strike us with “lé lightning”.  (sorry if you are super religious, or French, but that’s some funny stuff right there).

After that, we decided to stay on the boat.  The kids did schoolwork in the morning and played all afternoon, the boys worked on boat projects, we played Euchre till all hours of the night, and we cooked all three meals per day onboard!!!! You might expect me to say that we hightailed it to the first english-speaking country we could find, but you would be wrong….