Dolphins love Dire – Fact !!

Well it’s New years eve and we haven’t started drinking yet! Got my first windsurf of the trip today up at Green Island off the coast of Antigua. Didn’t have much choice really after wrapping my Kite around the mast of some German blokes yacht…..Schizer !! Prick – I was only just mangaing to get up wind! Well at least I can still W/Surf.

So since our last post, after Martinique we sailed to Les Saintes (23rd Dec), a gorgeous little French island off the coast of Gaudeloupe. Billy had caught a Mahee mahee or dolphin fish (not sure about the spelling) on the way up which we had that night and also became our Christmas dinner. Ironically les saintes has more scooters and scooter hire places than you can shake a Vespa at, yet you can walk around the whole island in a few hours! You can see wild iguanas on the island as they are protected- well as protected as they can be from hundreds of pissed up French geezers on scooters!

There were a few people sailing off the small island opposite Les Saintes main bay, where I think there was  a little centre. I tried to have a crimbo day sail to no avail!

There was a beach on the opposite side of the island that Jimmy and I walked over to, you are not allowed to swim their due to the current, but would be ideal for Wsurf/Ksurf. Long sandy beach, bit of rubbish on it and it is bisected by the end of the islands runway.

Christmas day we left Les Saintes on route to return to Antigua. We left about 4 in the afternoon, was slow going up the west coast of Guadaloupe and got a bit battered between the two islands. However, just after getting into the lee of Guadaloupe we had a pod of dolphins off the bow, which was awesome –great Christmas day treat. Jimmy and I rushed up the front and took some. It’s funny I’m reading Ellen MacArthur’s first book at the minute and she whilst sailing around Britain had dolphins off the bow and commented that she could not think of a animal that so easily brings a smile to your face and I know what she meant. Was pretty cool and they stayed on and off for about 20mins, they would turn on their side to look up at you with one eye and a big grin, as if to say “hey check this shit out, look what we can do!”. We decided it was the Dire Straits that we had pumping from the cabin that drew them in – Dolphins love Dire…fact !!

We arrived at English harbour early boxing day and checked in. We decided to crack on up the east coast to Green Island were we had heard their was good kiting and whooo – an anchorage, we were not disappointed. Green Island is a deserted island and we anchored on the north side in a little bay. There was a little beach just around the other side of the bay (you could swim it in a minute or so), it was perfect. The NE wind blew across shore and was flat as you like, protected by the reefs,  was only a small beach though and if you were under powered and went a little to far down wind you would miss the beach-as I later would discover.  Jimmy had a quick go about 4ish that day but the wind had died and we sacked it off.

Needless to say we were up early the next morning, (27^th Dec) think I was up about 6 and read for a while-we were excited. Nipped over to the beach about 7.30 with all our gear. It was 12m weather but I had a crack on my 9m anyway and the inevitable happened, went down wind – Jimmy to the rescue. Tried again a little later- same result, but had a nice little sail anyway till Billy picked me up.  There is a schools that teach off the beach aptly named ‘Green Island Kitesurfing’,  there motto is ‘life starts at 40knts’ – little excessive!!  It’s been a couple of weeks but we have finally found a good spot for the anchor/play spot combo. Prob going to stay around here for a couple of weeks, also go up to check out Jaborwock beach, one up near the airport.

Remember – ‘If you can see the horizon it’s a good day!’  (Some random bloke off the street., Falmouth, 2010)

Oh and also remember, it’s a fooking clichéd notion that in order to have a conventional awesome New Year, you somehow need to have and unconventional shitty time ! So on that premise let’s get messed up and try and crawl into your own shoe in some gutter somewhere!

…..may all acquaintance be forgot…daa daa da da daa da ….AULD LANG SYNE !!

Happy New Year !