Deshaies, Guadaloupe

Our journey this morning took us past some spectacular views of the Soufriere Hills volcano on Montserrat; there were several fissures in the mountainside with smoke and ash billowing out of them. And even from two miles away, we were able to see the remains of the airport and several buildings partially buried beneath the debris. Hopefully our photos will do the scene justice. When we cleared into Guadaloupe, I got to practice my high school French by asking a helpful local guy to give us directions to the customs office. I'm just glad the customs building ended up being on the right-hand-side of the street because I can only remember the French word for "right"; I wouldn't recognize the word "left" if it walked up and started dancing the can-can. By the way, the name of the country is pronounced the French way, GWAD-eh-loop, not the Spanish/Mexican/Arizonan way, gwad-uh-LOO-pay. Also the French have a rule about pronouncing as few consonants as possible, so the name of the town is actually day-HAY. All together now: Deshaies, Guadaloupe. Just say it with an outrrrageous Frrench accent, and it'll sound about right.

On the way over to Guadaloupe, we observed how a small problem can develop into a much bigger one. Yesterday in Montserrat we noticed that two of the screws holding our bimini (roof over the cockpit) had pulled loose and one had sheared off. We put off doing anything about it because it will be kind of a big job to fix, and we were leaving the next day. So Kevin re-tightened the two screws that were loose and we hoped for the best. Well, on our passage this morning, the screws pulled out again and although the bimini is attached in seven other places, it began swaying slightly. Not good. Especially since a part of the mainsail attaches to the bimini structure and with the sail up the whole structure is under a lot of stress. We could see that one of the other attachment points was taking the full load and the screws holding it were about to go too, so we took the sail down and motored the rest of the way. So I guess we've got a new project to work on.

Where we are:
Location=Deshaies, Guadaloupe
Lat=16 18.460
Lon=61 47.825