More tales from Paradise
NORDLYS
David and Annette Ridout
Wed 18 Feb 2009 20:51
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More tales from
Paradise
17:00N 61:46W
Falmouth Harbour
Antigua
I have been shaken out of my idleness by a reader
who has reminded me that it is nearly a month since I last updated the goings on
of the good ship Nordlys. Well she has been bashing her way up and down
these islands but I will not bore you with great detail.
The sailing is nearly always the same. A heavy weather almost close hauled
bash between the islands that is sometimes, actually fairly often, interspersed
with a squall that brings a good 30 plus knots and a lot of rain. This
usually does not last more than twenty minutes but is quite exciting while it
does. Before going to Guadeloupe to collect our Danish visitors we spent a
quiet few days back in Dominica. This basic Caribbean island with its
contented people and beautiful scenery is very much to our liking. There
is only one snag. On several nights each week one of the shoreside pubs
lays on an all night disco of the local reggae music. I use the last
word advisedly as it has little to do with music as I understand the
word. Lying in ones bunk at 0500hrs with ear plugs in and still able
to make out every word the singer is saying about a mile away is an
acquired taste. How the townsfolk accept this is beyond me.
 This picture was taken at anchor off the town of Portsmouth in
Dominica. It is a fairly wet place.
 Do not get me wrong, some of the sailing is perfect.
Here we are enroute to The Saints
from Dominica.
The Saints are a lovely small group of islands
lying to the south of Guadeloupe. There were never any plantations here so
no slaves so few black people today. Many darkish French locals have
blue eyes as they originated from Brittany. Towering over the anchorage is a
hill of 1056ft. This is a good brisk half hours climb and was achieved by
all four of us although with the loss of much perspiration due to the
heat. The reward of the view made the exercise well worth it. The Saints
are a magic place and the combination of Caribbean and French atmospheres seems
to blend particularly well here. I have never mixed pain au chocolat and
rum but one feels one almost could here.
 Nordlys is a white dot to the left of the picture. I
would love to fly a light aircraft into
the airfield. The picture looks NE so the aircraft
nearly always land over the town.
Pointe a Pitre, the main commercial town and port
of Guadeloupe is a sorry place. There has been no
investment since our last visit over six years ago and the place is dirty
and tatty and on top of this the islands of Guadeloupe and now also
Martinique are in the middle of prolonged industrial unrest. The
trade unions, some fifty of them, have got together and said enough is
enough. The cost of living, in Euros, on these French islands is very
high. Staples cost much more than in France. Wages for the locals
are much lower than for the working people of France. Only the French
civil servants with their enlarged and tax free incomes do well. On top of
this a throw back to the colonial days is the fact that one percent of the
population, almost exclusively white, owns over 90% of the land and most of the
bigger businesses. As it stands all big supermarkets are shut, most fuel
stations also and many businesses are at a standstill. Apparently 10,000
mostly French people have cancelled their holidays thus many hotels are shut and
have laid off their workers. The future does not look good and France has
sent a few hundred of the dreaded CRS riot troops to the islands. The
internet tells me that the BBC has not picked up on this potential time
bomb, perhaps because it is not a middle east problem nor a story of woe.
The International Herald Tribune and its web site cover the problem well.
Unemployment in the French colonies generally is very high and the big
worry is that the trouble in the aforementioned islands will spread.
Neither side can give way easily. However rest assured everywhere one goes
one sees signs saying that your taxes are being happily spent by the EU on
various projects that seem to have little to do with the basic welfare of the
population. It would be a sad day if France gave up its colonies and let
the population own their own land and fend for themselves. What would the
bureaucrats of Brussels spend their money on?
These troubles have rather thrown our
arrangements. Car hire is a non starter and taxis are a rarity. We
are not keen on spending more time in Pointe a Pitre, especially as we
heard that last night the protesters were torching cars and breaking
glass. Thus we have sailed up to Falmouth harbour on Antigua. Lars and Kis will fly back from here to Guadeloupe via
Dominica. We keep our fingers crossed that LIAT will behave itself.
We had a good if brisk sail the forty miles up here from DesHaies on the NW tip
of Guadeloupe. Only one squall caused us to reef in a hurry.
Falmouth is an amazing sight these days as the super yachts have made this their
Caribbean home. The son of good friends of ours is the skipper of a 90 foot
Jongert. His yacht looks rather like a small dinghy compared to the
'ships' on either side of her. They are both approximately 300ft long. Two
80 foot Swans looked rather like a Contessa 32 does in the Yacht
Haven.
 Maltese Falcon taken while we breakfasted at anchor in
Falmouth Harbour.
Note the man in the bosun's chair. We had a grandstand
view as he unfurled and serviced the sails on
this amazing yacht. Apparently her build costs were
about $90 million.
Valsheda, the J class yacht is here. She
looks absolutely fabulous, as does the large motor yacht that is her
tender. The latter looks like a converted oil supply
vessel. It gleams and the anchor nestles in a huge stainless steel case
set into the hull. We could not however expect our visitors to spend all
their time looking at such wealth so today we sailed into a lovely 15 knot
breeze and beat up to Green Island where we are moored as I write this. At
Annette's party in Bequia Hugh and Roo arrived on a yacht
belonging to a friend of Hugh, a well-known Caribbean sailor. This man of
many seasons is doing much better now our friends have left him as he has just
sailed into the anchorage with four young ladies in mini bikinis, at least
on the bottom half. Nothing on the top. His anchor lady was quite a
sight. He looked happy and had a far bigger grin on his face as he passed
us than he ever did on Bequia. All I was interested in is that this man of
great Caribbean experience has chosen the same anchorage as we have. There
is due to be a 3.5 metre swell from the north starting tonight for 48
hours. My satellite weather forecast talked of not 'storm' but 'hurricane'
strength winds up at 49N (off the very NE USA). The North Atlantic
winter gales are obviously in fine form. We get their swells but
luckily neither their winds nor the freezing spray warnings that go to any ships
in their vicinity. There is a reason that the lowest line of the Plimsoll
mark on ships is for the north atlantic in winter.
Happy times dear readers, battle on with the
weather and the economics. We will do the same!
David and Annette
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