Iles des Saintes

We spent the whole day yesterday working on the bimini repair. Had to literally tear the boat apart; we took off the ceiling liner in the main salon, and had to completely disassemble both the closets to get the supports bolted on properly. But today we motorsailed into the wind with some light choppy waves and the fix held together just fine. So now that that particular fire is out we have a pool going on what will break next. Anyone want to get in on the action?

We are now anchored in the town of Le Bourg on one of the islands that is part of the Iles des Saintes (eel day saint). It's a small group of islands between Guadaloupe and Dominica but it is still part of Guadaloupe/France. The town here is very touristy; there are day trip ferries that come over from Guadaloupe. We liked walking up and down the main street and looking for bargains. Unfortunately the currency in all the French islands is the Euro, so our dollar doesn't go as far as it does in some of the other countries. Despite that fact, we still rank Guadaloupe pretty high up the list of our favorite places we've been so far. There's a little of everything here -- cosmopolitan areas, scenic hiking, pretty beaches, and picturesque farmland. And the people here have been amazingly friendly and receptive to us, even though we don't speak the language well and they have to repeat things four times or use exaggerated pantomimes to get the point across. We're a little sad to be leaving after only a few days here. We would've liked to explore a little more but some of you might have heard that they had the first named storm of the season this week (subtropical storm Andrea). So we are eager to keep moving south to Grenada, where we plan to hole up for hurricane season.

Where we are:
Location=Iles des Saintes
Lat=15 52.046
Lon=61 35.158