Islet Le Gosier – Guadeloupe
After nearly a week in Pointe a Pitre, time to move on. Not many places for us to go on the south coast of Grande Terre. The first one is Le Gosier island, which is very close to the main land, the islet is surrounded by a coral reef and it is fairly protected with the east wind we have at the moment, and there is plenty of room even if it is quite a busy place. The sea behind the coral reef is just so blue and flat it is great for swimming, which we do from the boat. There are so many people swimming long distances, it is amazing. Everyone is doing it here; they even have little buoys attached to their feet so they can be seen. We do watch in awe, open sea swimming is hard, not only is it hard physically but with the traffic of speedboats, yachts, jet skis going full blast, I’d be petrified to be run over. The beach on the island is not so big and there are too many people being ferried from the main land, we don’t really feel like joining the throng! So we opt to get up early in the morning to go and explore, should only take 10 mn, the lighthouse being the only remarkable feature. As it turned out, our engine started playing up when we were charging the batteries and it is raining heavily in the morning. Also with Easter next week end, we are a bit concerned that we will be stuck for days before we see a mechanic, so back we go to Pointe a Pitre after 3 nights at anchor by the islet. We had to wait for the rain to ease up…not going anywhere when it is raining! The return trip is a far cry from the outbound one. The wind is right on our back and we are in Pointe a Pitre’s bay in no time at all and dodging the rain too.
Monday first thing, we are looking for someone to look at our engine, Ian has a few ideas but he has been unable to categorically identify the fault, although he thinks that it is only an air gap somewhere in the system. Fortunately, Bernard is able to come and take a look early the next day. Ian was right; he is also given a few pointers on how to solve all the things that could go wrong with the engine (loads of arm waving and me trying to translate). We did have a laugh though, apparently he was sent to us because no one else in his team wanted anything to do with a Perkins engine, rumour has it that they are trouble. Bernard did say that it was the nicest one he had ever seen, which was nice to hear.
Since we are here, we go food shopping, we take the dinghy to the end of the lagoon, nearer to the supermarket and it is much more pleasant than the long walk on the hot road. The lagoon is full of very nice boats and lovely houses, some with spectacular gardens. We tie up by the aquarium, in front of nice restaurants, only a short walk away. We get more than we could last time, when we had to carry it all. Back on the boat, we manage to hook up to the internet, so we make the most of it. Even talked real time with a few friends. Not very often!