Îles des Saintes Guadeloupe

Charlotte sailing us towards Îles des Saintes

As pretty as Îlet de Gosier was, having anchored off it for the night, we wanted to move on to explore some of the islands we had told Charlotte we would visit during her stay with us. The first group on that list was LesÎles des Saintes, just a few miles to the southwest of Guadeloupe.

Sailing past Basse-Terre (L) and approaching Bourg des Saintes

Secured to a mooring buoy off Bourg des Saintes

We left at 0930 for the 21-mile passage with a nice 10-15 knot wind from the east. It was all very civilised and BV was sufficiently level for Charlotte to begin some early panic tanning up on the foredeck.

We made reasonable time and arrived between Îlet de Cabrit and the main island of Terre d’en Hautjust before 1300hrs. Here we were lucky enough to find an available mooring buoy to secure to, tucked into the corner of the bay where we were out of the swell. There are large mooring fields in many of the bays around The Saintes and anchoring is only permitted outside them. Unsurprisingly, the mooring fields are located in the most protected, and usually the shallowest, parts of the bays so anchoring off can result in a very long dinghy ride ashore and a rolly night’s sleep.

Since we had arrived on Sunday lunchtime, we assumed that everything ashore in Bourg des Saintes would be closed. Instead, we hopped in the dinghy and puttered across to the southern tip of Îlet a Cabrit where our pilot book assured us the snorkelling was good. The outboard engine was still very sick after the impeller failure and overheating incident in Dominica, despite my ministrations in Pointe Á Pitre. The last thing we wanted at this stage was for the engine to overheat again, forcing us to row with 3 people in the dinghy.

Happily, it got us to the island [Ed: and back again later] and we had a lovely hour snorkelling around some interesting rock and coral formations, with a good number of fish to see too. By the time we returned to BV it was surprisingly late but there’s always plenty of time for rum punch sundowners, particularly when you have friends in the anchorage, and we had invited Tom and Pam (and McDuff, their dog) from Stealin’ Timeover for a catch-up when we had seen them on a mooring not too far from us. As ever, the rum and the conversation flowed and all too soon it was much later than any of us had planned!

Views over the mooring field (above) and towards Bourg des Saintes

In the morning we went ashore; slowly again for obvious reasons! Terre d’en Haut is a small island, just 3 miles by 2 miles, perfect for a morning walk and explore whilst the outboard cooled off from its exertions.

Bourg des Saintes’ main street

Bourg des Saintes is a delightful little holiday town and is the main populated area on the islands. It’s full of little boutique shops and restaurants, all brightly coloured in the Caribbean style. We had 2 admin tasks to do in the ‘metropolis’: buy some bread and complete the clearance process for leaving the Guadeloupe islands. The latter was done very quickly at a computer in Les Saintes Multiservices; the bread took a little more of a walk.

The island is blessed with some lovely beaches and the whole scene thrilled Charlotte who was very excited to be in the Caribbean. But she also added to our tasks ashore because she wanted to see some iguanas. Kaia and Kjell on 2Khad already visited Terre d’en Haut and, when we had met them at Pointe ÀPitre, they had told us about an area where we might find some. Seeing iguanas close up had immediately become one of Charlotte’s ‘must do’ holiday activities.

As briefed by Kaia and Kjell, we walked up the ridgeline to the east of the town and found the patch of scrub ground they had described. Sure enough, almost immediately we spotted 3 iguanas creeping about.

Leaving Bourg des Saintes and anchored off Pain de Sucre

With iguanas ticked off the holiday sightseeing wishlist and the departure paperwork completed, we moved onto the next holiday wishlist task; improving Charlotte’s snorkelling technique. A mile to the west of Bourg des Saintes, at the tip of the bay there is a distinctive headland called Pain du Sucre, with clearly defined basalt columns on its northwest side and good snorkelling around its base. The bay just to the south is deep but has about 15 mooring laid in it and we had hoped to pick up one of them; sadly, they were all full. We thought that we were in luck when a yacht moved off but the crew left their dinghy attached to the buoy, ‘reserving’ it for when they came back from a day sail, which we thought was rather selfish. Huffing somewhat, we anchored outside the buoyed off mooring field instead and had a surprisingly tranquil night. Later on, a motor yacht turned up and obviously thought the same as us about the dinghy. Being French, he just moored up to the buoy anyway!

Charlotte had done plenty of snorkelling before but following the previous day’s swim said that she had struggled to overcome her natural buoyancy when trying to dive down and had found that her ears hurt if she swam down more than just a couple of metres. So we lent her a weight belt to trial to see if it helped with the buoyancy and also explained how she could balance the pressure in her ears by holding her nose and blowing gently as she dived down. Both proved a great success and in next to no time she was happily diving down to 6 metres to take a closer look at the corals and fish.

It was a good snorkelling site with lots of colourful soft and hard corals to look at.

There were also lots of small reef fish…

… including this balloon fish, which we found hiding in a large yellow barrel sponge and which we all agreed looked a lot like ET.

We also saw some small spiny lobsters and a group of reef squid with pulsing coloured spots on their skin. All in all, there was plenty to see, far more so than in most of the places Charlotte had snorkelled in Greece and she was hugely enthused by the extra sealife you can see in the Caribbean.

After over an hour of fun, we retreated back aboard BV to discuss where we would go next. Our clearance gave us 48 hours to leave Guadeloupe and so we decided that we would start early in the morning and head around the west side of Guadeloupe to another area reported to have good snorkelling, Pigeon Island.

Îles des Saintes, Guadeloupe