Pigeon Island Guadeloupe

Leaving Îles des Saintes

To give us time at Pigeon Island, we left Îles des Saintes at 0600hrs on Tuesday 27 March and headed north up the western side of Guadeloupe.

Between the islands we caught a rather large Spanish Mackerel which I thought that we were going to keep. However, once Nicky had done a quick check on areas that might have ciguatera we decided to throw it back alive rather than risk poisoning anyone.

La Soufriere, Basse Terre

Little Tunny

The west side of Guadeloupe, Basse Terre, has an active volcano, La Soufriere, of which we had good views as we tracked north. A little further on we caught a small tunny. They can grow to be up to 1.2metres long, so we decided that this small one would be safe to eat for dinner.

Pigeon Island

Half way up the western side of Guadeloupe is Pigeon Island and the Cousteau underwater park. The early start meant that we had had little to no wind for the 24-mile passage so, having motored the whole way, by 1015hrs we had found a suitable anchorage in the bay opposite the island and were ready to explore the marine park.

The waters around the island are a no-anchoring zone and while there are day-use moorings close off Pigeon Island they are not designed for boats the size of BV, hence our choice of anchorage. Unfortunately, that left us with a ½ mile dinghy ride across to the underwater park which was something of a concern once again. But, by taking it slowly (again!) we got across and secured the dinghy to one of the short stay buoys just to the west of the channel between Pigeon Island and its small off-lying rock, Petit Îlet. Donning our snorkelling gear and rolling over the side, we were immediately rewarded with the sight of a myriad reef fish.

Stoplight parrot fish

We finned around near the dinghy mooring area for a while, enjoying the shoals of small fish and the lazily cruising barracuda that seemed to enjoy tailing Nicky. We then headed west, across the shallows between the islands and out into deeper water on the other side. We worked our way along some of the south side of Pigeon Island there was relatively little to see though and quite a lot of Sargasso weed so we turned back to Petit Îlet. The west and south sides of the rocky islet were much more interesting with the rocky shore dropping almost straight down giving us a deep wall to snorkel up and down.

Charlotte and Nicky diving down to about 7 metres to look at the sea wall close up

There was less to see near the surface than I had expected but we all dived down to about 7 metres to get a closer look at the lower part of the wall, particularly under the rocky shelves where we saw fish hiding. As we pottered back toward the dinghy we saw more shoals of reef fish and Nicky’s barracuda picked up her tail again. Somewhere around Pigeon Island is an underwater statue of Jacques Cousteau but we didn’t find it – one for next time! After about an hour we headed back to BV and from her Charlotte and I braved the shoal of small stinging jellyfish to search for turtles who graze on the seagrass in the middle of the bay. We were fortunate enough to see 6 different turtles, mostly grazing on the seabed, and we also saw one swimming up to the surface to breathe. Another holiday wishlist item, swimming with turtles, ticked off by Charlotte.

As well as snorkelling around Pigeon Island, Nicky and I also took the opportunity to get some last food items from the French supermarkets close by. We left Charlotte on board relaxing in the afternoon sun whilst we did a quick dash around the Carrefour and Leader Price stores [Ed: note, not a quick dash ashore in our long-suffering tender!]. We also found an excellent boulangerie/patisserie where we bought what we expected to be our last decent loaf of bread for a very long time – we were not wrong! Having stocked up on goodies, we retired back to BV for sundowners before an early start (yes, again!) for our 50-mile passage north to Antigua. Murray and Cate from Cool Changejoined us for rum punches on BV. They had seen us in The Saintes and, coincidentally, had also come up to Pigeon Island and anchored not too far from us. We heard how they were on their way towards New Zealand, and that they knew about us having met Philip and Claudia on Bruno’s Girl. It sometimes seems that the sailing community is very small!

Pigeon Island, Guadeloupe