The Saline river was a really nice change, to the north we had to go zigzag through the reefs and islands and we ended up just in front of the bridge in the late afternoon. We were luckily the only one, there was not much space there, but a lot of no-see-ums. That we had expected so we closed off the boat pretty good.
I had set all the clocks we had to the alarm time of 3.30, but we were already awake by then (the built-in clock). We tied all the fenders we had on both sides and were ready to go at 4.15. It was very dark and I did not see any movement on the bridge. At 4.35 I tried to call the bridge on the radio, got no response, except that the bridge opened. This bridge was really wide enough and after a shouted “allez” we went.
After 15 minutes on the river we arrived at the other two bridges. These bridges were much narrower and we only had 2 feet on each side but we managed to get through without touching the pillars. Shortly after the last bridge we anchored and went back to bed for a short nap. It was only 3 miles to the anchorage north of the marina where we put the anchor down.
The marina is very large and destination to the sailors from the “Route du Rhum”, a multi-hull race from France to Guadeloupe. It has many cute restaurants and a variety of other shops. We wanted to rent a car to go the volcano at Basse Terre but because of carnival there were no cars available and the vulcano was any how in the clouds the whole day.
So we dinghied to town and walked over to a second hand chandlery along a back street with “ladies of the horizontal”. I was greeting them in the beginning with a pleasant "bonjour", but they did not really looked back at me, suddenly I said to Jacques,: there are a lot of single women on this street!!. So he had to make me a little wiser!!! The owner is a Dutch woman who lives there already 16 years. She was happy to be able to speak Dutch with us. Afterwords we went to downtown which is the first typical creole place we visited. Really nice with lots of open markets full of fresh fish and spices, a town that lived its own live and not that of the tourists.
I had set all the clocks we had to the alarm time of 3.30, but we were already awake by then (the built-in clock). We tied all the fenders we had on both sides and were ready to go at 4.15. It was very dark and I did not see any movement on the bridge. At 4.35 I tried to call the bridge on the radio, got no response, except that the bridge opened. This bridge was really wide enough and after a shouted “allez” we went.
After 15 minutes on the river we arrived at the other two bridges. These bridges were much narrower and we only had 2 feet on each side but we managed to get through without touching the pillars. Shortly after the last bridge we anchored and went back to bed for a short nap. It was only 3 miles to the anchorage north of the marina where we put the anchor down.
The marina is very large and destination to the sailors from the “Route du Rhum”, a multi-hull race from France to Guadeloupe. It has many cute restaurants and a variety of other shops. We wanted to rent a car to go the volcano at Basse Terre but because of carnival there were no cars available and the vulcano was any how in the clouds the whole day.
So we dinghied to town and walked over to a second hand chandlery along a back street with “ladies of the horizontal”. I was greeting them in the beginning with a pleasant "bonjour", but they did not really looked back at me, suddenly I said to Jacques,: there are a lot of single women on this street!!. So he had to make me a little wiser!!! The owner is a Dutch woman who lives there already 16 years. She was happy to be able to speak Dutch with us. Afterwords we went to downtown which is the first typical creole place we visited. Really nice with lots of open markets full of fresh fish and spices, a town that lived its own live and not that of the tourists.
At lunchtime we met a couple from Rotkreuz, Switzerland; it is a really small village where we lived for three years when we arrived there. The world is really small when we are discussing live in Rotkreuz on the island of Guadeloupe. Was really nice. We promised to send them an E-mail with our blog address so that they can follow our progress.
The next day we left for Marie Galante, 18 miles down the road. It was supposed to be calm weather but we had some near-showers with a lot of wind and waves. We made it safely to Grand Bourg at Marie Galante and anchored in the harbor, waiting for better weather to sail to Dominica.
Beaucoup de baises amicables from Ria
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