"Arctracer" Letters

Update 10 - Iles du Salut 21 March 2013

When you've been at sea for 17 consecutive days and you're on night watch and you're alone and it's dark and the moonlight has been smothered by the clouds and a storm is approaching and a huge wave has just splashed you in the back and your last "shower" was on deck in a bathing suit with 2.5 liters of water nearly a week ago and you haven't seen your husband/best friend in over 7 weeks and you're pretty sure your friends' lives are going on even without your presence and you haven't had ice cream since St. Helena...I highly recommend getting out the iPod and playing Sailing by Christopher Cross.

CALGON, take me away! ;)

It is now Thursday, March 21. It has been exactly 33 years since Mom & Jerry's first date and 219 months since they were married. Happy anniversary to them!

The good news is we made it to Iles du Salut, off the coast of French Guiana! The final two days of sailing were fast and furious with the aid of the wind and current - about 185 miles per day. Generally, we go about 140 miles.

We anchored off Ile Royale, opened up the hatches to let in some air and got cleaned up! When we're anchored or sailing in calm conditions, we can use the shower in the bathroom. There's a jug on deck with a tube that goes down into the shower and you have to turn the nozzle to let a little water out at a time. The first time you scrub, the dirt and grime gets loosened up and the second time you can actually get rid of some of it. You can see exactly how dirty you were because the water accumulates on the floor of the shower until you're done and can pump it out. Try it, you'll like it! (Not really, but at this point any version of a shower is a luxury!)

Once we were clean(ish), Jerry rowed me and Mom ashore. There's no place to "check in" here, so no passport stamps from French Guiana.

The islands are now a French heritage site but were previously used as a penal colony (until shut down completely in the 1950s.) Tour boats come from the mainland every day, but it's not "touristy." There is one expensive restaurant with a small gift shop and a few rooms that people can stay in, but other than that, you're on your own.

I checked my iPhone at the restaurant and saw there was some sort of password protected Internet access, but when I asked the woman in charge (seemingly in charge of everything) about it with my limited French, she just shook her head and said "no Internet." I thanked her as I decided not to press any further. What's a few more days?

We decided to have dinner ashore and studied the menu, which was posted, a bit. It was prix fixe and there were two choices each for appetizer, entree and dessert. Between us, we got the gist of what we might be eating. We weren't sure what raie was, but figured it was probably some sort of fish, since the other main course was with chicken. Funny how sometimes things are what they sound like. Raie=ray/skate. Our waitress made a gliding gesture with her arms and drew a little cartoon for us to explain. We all opted for the non-fish options since we've had so much mahi-mahi in the last few weeks. We had a mutton salad (instead of fish soup) and couscous with chicken & sausage (instead of skate) and for dessert two of us ordered chocolate mousse and one (Jerry) had coconut cake. Mom & Jerry weren't too impressed by the meal, but I rather enjoyed it... By the time dinner was done, it was dark. I was used to being up later because of my night watch time, but it was past bedtime for my elders and we were all exhausted. Luckily Mom & I brought flashlights, as the route back down to the landing (and our dinghy) led us down lots of winding paths and old stone steps through the jungle-y landscape - none of it lit.

Walking around the island before dinner that evening and the following day (yesterday) was a treat! So green and so much wildlife! Different from the desert of Namibia where I began my journey... We saw agouti (funny long-legged guinea pigs). We were excited to see the first few, but soon realized they were EVERYWHERE. We also saw peacocks, pheasants, macaws, roosters, lizards, iguanas, pigs, and two types of monkeys - capuchins and another we're not sure about - will look it up when we have Google! There was a pair of red macaws (there were blue ones around too) that landed right next to us and demanded our attention when we were spending too much time looking at a peacock. A gentleman wandered by as I was taking video and warned us that they weren't very friendly and acted "funny" sometimes. There was one area with a warning sign about the presence of caimans, but we didn't come across any.

We didn't visit Ile du Diable or Ile St. Joseph, but thoroughly enjoyed Ile Royale! We are now getting ready to set sail again and should arrive in Suriname in about two days. See you on Facebook?!

Ta!

Sailor Hilary