Finally left Antigua

Well, it was hard to do, but we finally picked up the anchor in English and headed south. Destination, DeShaies, Guadaloupe. Had a pretty good sail over and our thought was that the new main did make a difference. Dropped anchor in DeShaies and who dinghies over but Phil on Beothuk! He's crew on a boat heading to Bermuda. All I can say is, that should be interesting!

It's Friday, we missed the two hour opening of Immigration by two hours, so here we are till Monday.

I've wanted to do this river hike forever, so we set off Sunday morning on a new hike with our walking sticks. Oh, did I mention that it's been raining a lot? Don't hike in a river, with boulders in the rain or after a rainstorm. Slipped on a boulder, into the river - so getting wet isn't a problem, but watching my finger go a few different ways was not a good thing. I guess there is a good thing about Dennis carrying a hankie (thank goodness it was clean!), since we wrapped my hand up. Then we had another hour to hike to get to the road and had to climb a steep incline. Did I mention, I think we're still having fun! Once we hit the road, a car stopped to ask directions. Yeah, right - I'm still speaking in Spanish and forgetting all my French. They ended up turning back and driving us back to town so that we could maybe find a clinic or something. Okay, Sunday and a French island - nothing open. Nearest hospital is 50 miles away. Suggestions from the town people were the local police. Well, it's a French island on Sunday. No hospital, clinic closed, doctor closed, pharmacy closed, and the local police station is closed. Once again, I deal with this. Back to the boat, iced the finger and wrapped it up while Dennis went around the anchorage looking for anyone with medical knowledge. A British boat, Cheetah, had company aboard and there was a nurse. I was kind of stressed, so I forget her name, but she was wonderful. Told me I was doing all the right things and to take care. Do you know how often you can hit a broken pinkie finger???? LOTS!!!! (5 weeks later, turns out it's dislocated and broken in 4 places!)

We headed off to the Pigeon Isand anchorage and did some hiking and snorkelling. We still say, we've been so spoiled by the Tobago Cays, the Roques, Aves and Bonaire, so this snorkelling is nice .... it's okay.

Then had a great sail down to Pain de Sucre in the Saintes. There was another boat racing for the anchorage while we lowered the sail -- could it be -- yes, it's John and Angela on Galadriel. Thought we anchored quite far away, but when the wind changed, we should have moved, but they were okay with us since they were leaving soon. Had a wonderful visit with them - where did that happy hour time go? Samji pulled in overnight and headed out the next day. We followed them a day later, on to Dominica and then Martinique. ~~~_/)~~~