Since we had stayed longer in Guadeloupe, and since the check-out process in Les Saintes was so informal, we decided that we needed to check out of Guadeloupe again before entering Antigua’s territory.  We know from past experience that Antigua is a little prickly about documentation when clearing in and out of their country.  The closest place from Pigeon Island to check out was Deshaies.  It was an hour and a half north of Pigeon Island by boat.  We looked into taking a bus, but the language barrier was too great.  The schedules were not posted and the woman I talked to told me that we would need to change buses along the way.  So, we gave up on the bus and took the boat there. 

The anchorage was relatively narrow with deep water.  There were some mooring balls, but someone posted on Facebook the week before that their mooring had broken while they were attached.  We found a spot to anchor in 40 feet of water.  We put out almost all of our chain.  The other thing about this mooring is that winds whip through the bay at 40 knots every once in a while and the boats swing around their anchors.  Because this was the first good weather window in about 10 days, there were a LOT of boats in this anchorage and we knew that more were coming since it was only lunch time.  We went into the Pelican store and found the customs computer in the back.  We cleared out and then walked back to the dinghy dock.  Town itself looked darling, with a pedestrian zone and boutique shops lined up along the street.  There was a nice promenade area in front of the dock.  The building looked like they were well cared for and the streets were relatively clean.  We would have liked to have explored this town more.  Instead, we used up the last of our Euros in the Patisserie and headed back to the boat.  The anchorage was so tight that boats were resting above other people’s anchors.  In order to leave, dinghies were pushing boats aside so that people could lift their anchors.  Because of the water depth, boats had to put out a lot of anchor chain, leaving what seemed to be big holes where another boat could fit.  Captain Steve wanted nothing to do with this and was afraid that our boat might get hit.  So, we grabbed a quick sandwich onboard and sailed back to the Pigeon Island anchorage for one last night.  This meant a 6a departure the next day.  However, it also meant that we could sleep throughout the night and not worry about our boat getting hit.