Not a very early start to our departure but we’re on our way to sail to Pointe-a-Pitre, the largest city in Guadeloupe and apparently only slightly smaller than Fort-de-France in Martinique. We have some boat items to get and it is a big hub for boats of all kinds.

It’s quite a calm day, not much breeze at all although it starts to rise a bit from the south-east as we clear the Saints. Time to put up some sail.

Except the main won’t unfurl. I fight with it for quite a while, we eventually just put up the foresail while I continue to wrestle with it, never achieving any success. It’s jammed again. Takes me a while to remember it’s actually the in-haul that jams, not the out-haul and I can see that the line appears to be crossed over on itself. I’ll have to try and clear it when we get settled. We sail on with foresail only.

Pretty soon the wind is head on and the foresail is flapping too. We can see all the boats around us for miles have dropped their sails and are motoring only so we do too.

It’s a pleasant ride, about 22 nms or so, would be nice to sail but we make 5 kts with the motor. It still overheats a bit but we can do 2500 rpm at least.

The approach to Point-a-Pitre is the usual French maze of fishermen buoys until we get close to the green and red channel buoys. Pretty straightforward after that.

On our left is the main mooring area – there are two or three anchored on the right side of the channel but our understanding is you’re not supposed to do that. We tool over to the mooring area. Not a free mooring anywhere! Oh well, we find a decent place to anchor, not easy as there are shoals here and mooring balls everywhere else, but there are a couple places. The one we pick is near a floating yellow marker which doesn’t seem to mark anything (the other yellow ones mark the shoals so I think this is a rogue that got loose) but it shouldn’t be a problem. We drop lots of chain and are safely anchored in a good spot.

A ball comes free right away behind us and we think about grabbing it but a big cat beats us to it.

Later in the evening, I hear a bang bang bang, go out to see what it is. Sure enough we have swung right around and are bumping against the damned orange ball. I don’t want to but I pull up some chain to avoid it. I don’t think the wind is going to get too nasty overnight.