January 27, 2023 was our 33rd wedding anniversary which Andrew and I celebrated starting with breakfast at L’îlet Douceur, a wonderful creperie on the main street in Bourg de Saints. The decor of this little coffee shop is fun and inviting with signatures from its international visitors all over the walls. We had yummy lemon crepes with apricot juice & coffee. The service was friendly, even encouraging my attempts at speaking French and offering up their Wi-Fi without being asked.
After breakfast, in anticipation of the arrival of our friends Jeff & Krista on s/v Agility, we picked up our favorite baguette, cheese & pate from Robbe, a wonderful gourmet deli & butcher and Andrew bought a spear gun at the nearby hardware for the upcoming Lion fish hunt in Dominica.
We hung out on the boat, made water and waited for Jeff & Krista to join us for cocktails on board and a dinner reservation at Au Bon Vivre. This restaurant offers excellent cuisine, prepared in the southern French style with fresh ingredients and presented in elegant fashion. Jeff & Krista ordered the chef’s surprise, which included an amuse bouche, an appetizer, a main course of local fish and dessert, all selected by the chef. I ordered tuna, Andrew ordered mahi. Everything was exquisite, and surprisingly cost less than $100 per person with wine… definitely the best meal in the islands so far!
The next day, we walked with Jeff & Krista around town to show them our favorite boulangerie, shops, the hardware store & spa, as well as the views from Marigot Bay. We had lunch at Couleuro du Monde, where Andrew & Krista sampled the Ti punch, apparently the best on the island, made with lime, ginger & mostly rum! That evening, we had a wonderful beef stew on board Agility and taught our friends what little we knew about how to play the game of dominos.
On Sunday, Krista and I walked thru town again, this time stopping in the local craft shops, watching the preparations for carnival, and then hiking to Plage de Pompiere, on the eastern coast of the main island in Les Saintes, only to discover that Andrew and I been there three years earlier. The area appeared to have been neglected since COVID, as I had taken the same photo (see below) years earlier with the sign fully intact.
Andrew and I made chili for dinner that evening and joined another Philadelphia couple on board Agility to watch the Eagles play San Francisco in the football playoffs. The Starlink and cable systems weren’t talking to each other so we did it the old fashioned way, listening to the game on the radio. The results were great: Eagles are in the Super Bowl!
The next day, we provisioned ham & cheese sandwiches on baguette for a picnic lunch and took the dinghy over to Ilet de Cabri, where Agility had moved to anchor. We hiked with Jeff & Krista to the fort for amazing views of the town and surrounding islands, and then came back to the boat for lunch. The plan was to meet up with Act III to snorkel but after a visit on board, some weather came in to change that part of the plan.
A squall with 35-40 knot winds blew thru the bay and Agility’s anchor was dragging. In trying to get the anchor up, the windless broke. We thought we might have snagged a cable so when we saw two divers going by in their dinghy, we hailed them for help. It was the nice British couple that we had seen on the hiking trail and the man gladly jumped in to check Jeff’s chain. When he came up, he reported a clear chain but the anchor had flipped over. The diver set it right and said everything looked good.
After about 20 minutes of trying to relax and at the same time, figure out where to get a windless fixed or replaced, we noticed the boat drifting again. This time Andrew and I helped Jeff & Krista pull the chain up manually and moved them over to where our boat was to give them our mooring. We had plans to head for Dominica and Jeff & Krista needed to figure out their next steps. Hopefully, they’ll be able to enjoy more of the islands as they work their way north, we thought, as we waved goodbye the following day.
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