There is salt on my eyelashes

Sorry if you’ve looked for an update over the past 10 days. We do have a great and loving excuse.  Kel’s parents joined us in Guadeloupe and we had a fun time visiting our favorite places with them.  Starting in Saint Francois, we then returned to Les Saints, Pigeon Island, and Deshaies. They are safely back in Texas now, although they took a bit of salt with them. Del and Pat stayed onboard Iolair and handled all the challenges of life on a sailboat like champs. On a boat you have moments of beauty, serenity and peace, but you pay the price with challenging wet rides to town, rolling docks and boats, and marine heads.  By the end of their visit, they were really in the groove. I bet their land legs are just slowly returning.

Kel and I have since moved the boat back to Les Saints and are preparing to check out of Guadeloupe and head to Dominica. We had a brisk upwind sail in 25-30 knots of wind on the nose. We sailed 7.5 hours, tacking back and forth for 3 of those hours to reach our destination. Salt spray covered everything.  Over the dodger, bimini, and both of us. You know you had a good sail when there are salt crystals on your eyelashes. Tomorrow, we’ll do a little internet pirating, take a few loads of laundry to the laverie, and resupply with fresh water. With a little luck, we’ll have a nice long rain squall tonight to wash the boat.

We will be sad to leave Guadeloupe. We just reached fluency.  Let’s see…we now know how to order salat vert, glacons, deux chocolat pains, un baguette, deux caffe latte, un cabrit hamburger.  Maybe we’ll have a jump on things when we get to Martinique in late March.