The sail from the Saintes to Marie Galante started out easily and peacefully. We left at 9a and arrived by 1p. Even though we were heading into the wind, requiring us to motor the whole way, the sea state was only a couple of feet high. When we started out, the sky was clear and we could see Guadeloupe to our port (left) side and the Saintes were clearly visible behind us. Approximately three quarters of the way through our trek, we hit some small rain squalls and the visibility became very limited. We have been in worse squalls and, despite the limited visibility, we were still able to spot fish pots in the general vicinity of where we were sailing. I was surprised to see them in such deep water, hours away from shore. We had to keep a close watch at the helm the entire trip to make sure that we steered around them. We were very lucky when we pulled into St. Louis, as the line we took avoided most of them (though we could see them on either side of our boat).
After we anchored to the north of St. Louis’ dock, I commented that this seems like a sleepy island. From our anchorage we hear an occasional cow mooing and at dawn a rooster tells us it is time to wake up. Every once in a while we see a car drive on the road along the beach, heading towards town. The anchorage itself is quite large with approximately one hundred boats scattered along the shore line, spaced well apart. The sea bottom is grassy and the water is fairly clear. A dinghy dock is approximately a quarter of a mile from our boat, which makes it easy for us to pop into town to visit a bakery.
Yesterday, Sunday morning, we took the dinghy into town to explore a little. As we were walking off of the floating dock, a couple heard me talking to Steve and were thrilled to have found English-speaking people on this small French island. We started talking and eventually I invited them over for “sun downers”. Francisco and Jennifer were coming to up on the end of their month-long charter and had spent several days exploring Marie Galante. It was fun to talk to them, as we struggle to meet people in the French islands as well.
We decided to walk to the U Express, the largest supermarket in St. Louis, so that I could buy some ingredients to make Sangria. We were successful in finding what was needed, and the Sangria turned out really well. (It is always a challenge because I am improvising with the recipe based on the ingredients I can find in the stores.)
The town of St. Louis didn’t appear that scenic to me. It is simply an old, French village without much pomp and circumstance associated with it. Some restaurants line the main road and overlook the beach, others are along a side street (there are only one or two of these in town). It doesn’t really cater to tourists in that I didn’t see souvenir shops. However, we found two bakeries across from each other right in the center of town. They seemed to mostly specialize in different kinds of breads. We bought a baguette from the supermarket, which tasted fantastic, so we didn’t buy anything from these bakeries on this trip into town.
