Our Grand Adventure

14th December 2025 | Odometer: 475nm | Guadeloupe

We really enjoyed some peaceful nights in Deshaies and were planning to head around to the North Eastern tip of the Guadeloupe “butterfly”. Ryan had picked out a beautiful anchorage called Islet de Fajout to anchor, only a few hours motor away. It looked like a lovely day out with a beautiful destination by lunch time. 

We were all set to head out, boat prepped, motor on, route planned… buuuut the mooring ball was totally twisted up in our lines! Low wind is lovely, but often what happens is the boat just wanders around all over the anchor or mooring ball without a strong breeze to hold it in place! I’d actually woken up a few times with the mooring ball hitting the hull over night and now the lines were a mess. We just got started untangling it with a boat hook when one of our neighbours saw the struggle, and dinghied on over to help us out. Thanks Inky Blue!

Once we were free we set out – into a rough, bouncy passage! The inner edge of the butterfly is full of reefs, so we thought it would be easier to go out and around them. Unfortunately, this meant heading upwind, into the swell for several hours, and in fact, for nearly the entire trip! As we went up the westward edge the wind and swell wraps around the island creating a northerly front to beat into; then once we had gone far enough we turned east only now to be facing into the easterly front coming in from the Atlantic. So much for our relaxing cruise! Hours bashing into the wind and getting tossed about; water spraying over the bow and windscreen and enormous amounts of water rushing down the sidedecks after each wave smashes over the bow.

At one stage, we found an interesting harmonic with the boat and the waves were as we crested over them and descended through them, the boat would perfectly align its natural bounce to the up and down swell. A very weird feeling. I think the closest I can imagine is driving an old car with bad shockies over a series of perfectly placed speedbumps so the oscillation never dampens and just keeps bouncing on and on. 

To make the extra bouncy passage a little more bothersome, there was a crazy number of fishing pots scattered around all through the deep waters. We nearly ran over a few and had to make some last minute hard turns to avoid snaring in the lines. These were out in surprisingly deep water, over 100 meters! I can’t say I enjoyed this trip too much as it was just too rough to let go or relax at all – we were both a little unnerved when the catamaran that had been following behind us turned back…. Were we doing something crazy?

Anyway, we pushed on, and eventually were able to turn down towards our destination. With the wind and swells diagonally behind us now it should be a much more pleasant final leg into the anchorage.

Ahh, look how beautiful it is. Look at all those rolling waves. Over the reefs. On both sides of us. That are super shallow. That we definitely shouldn’t hit. That we need to go past.

:/

Ergghhhh…. Reef navigation is not for the faint hearted! Navionics was pretty good getting us most of the way in, but the last couple of hundred meters to the moorings were over really shallow water. Think, 2 metres deep. As you are winding your way in, I was spotting on the bow and calling out directions to Ryan – we had to dodge extremely shallow patches, large coral bombies just rising up suddenly and lots and lots of rocky bits. We finally made it to the mooring ball and tied up. What, a, relief!

Once my heart rate had come down from the reef navigation we could take a look around and appreciate how beautiful the spot was. Gorgeous blues, greens and aquamarine extending all around, with waves crashing on the outer reef in the distance. A beautiful mangrove island and barely a soul in sight. Glorious!

After a few hours of napping and recovery we decided to explore the mangroves by dinghy. We had hoped to snorkel some of the reef around us but unfortunately the majority was dead. We did get some shots of some cute little anemones that were right under our transom and a surprising number of juvenile fish around them.

We were both enjoying how peaceful and calm the anchorage was when we suddenly noticed that all the other boats had left… what was going on? Had a weather warning come up? It wasn’t a very protected spot… We jumped online to check the charts and weather apps… oh, oh no, this is a daytime only anchorage and anchoring overnight is prohibited!

We were not in the least bit prepared to move on – where would we go? What could we get to easily in the afternoon light? We always try and time things so that we would arrive by 3pm at the latest and we have plenty of light to set (and reset if needed) our anchor. The French take their national park rules really seriously and we were genuinely worried that we would be asked to move late in the evening by a park ranger if we stayed. 

What to do!

After a brief bit of panic we decided to shift over to Port Louis approximately 1 hour away. It was 4.30pm. Sunset was at 5.30pm. We should be able to make it just in time! We rushed around and prepped the boat for departure, then headed out back the way we came. 

Writing this in hindsight I wish we had made very different choices here. We rushed out without doing our normal preparation. We were now going over a very shallow reef, driving straight into the setting sun, which meant that I couldn’t see more than ten meters ahead of us in the water… over shallow reef, which we had to dodge… and I couldn’t see! It was way too late to turn back to the mooring ball, but also, way too late to be heading out! 

We kept on. 

And made it out the reef to the narrow entrance and into the bay.

Phew. What a huge relief!

Til I realised I hadn’t checked the wind or wave predictions for our route at all and I had no idea what we were heading into about ten minutes into it. Alas, now there were fishing pots to dodge in the fading light. I was peak anxiety at this point. Thankfully the wind and waves were far better than earlier with good protection from the mainland of Guadeloupe. We could see our anchorage in the distance and it should be a relatively straightforward transit. We bumped up the RPM and burned a bit more fuel to go at 7 knots rather than 6. 

I was hanging out the port side door of the pilot house, on fishing pot watch, when I finally saw…. DOLPHINS!!!! 

WOOOO! What a thrill! A beautiful pair of dolphins appeared and were riding our bow wave for about 10 to 15 minutes. What an absolute high!

In just seconds, we were both transformed from tense, a bit strung out and anxious about what was going on, to absolutely whooping in delight watching these glorious creatures frolic and dive on the bow. We were both grinning like idiots and hanging over to watch them, trying to remember to watch out for fishing pots still! I tell you, the lows are low but the highs are HIGH!

After the dolphins eventually tired and peeled off, we both kept grinning like fools and were coming down off our high right as we arrived to the anchorage. The anchorage is not overly pretty, looking onto a fishing port that was being dredged on one end, and a long mangrove beach stretching south. The sun was now down already and the light was fading quickly. We picked a spot at the end of the pack in clear area and dropped anchor. While in reverse checking if it was set, I felt some unusual bumping in the chain but then it held… so it was probably all good… right? Right!?

Wrong. Ryan quickly dived in to check if it had set properly only to find it was just half hooked onto a rock. If the wind shifted at all we would have blown free really easily and then just dragged. Worse still, the whole bottom area was just rocky, meaning it would be really hard to set an anchor. Luckily, he spied a sandy patch a few meters to one side. Pulling a bit of a Hercules manoeuvre, he dove down to the bottom, lifted the anchor and walked it to the sandy patch and placed it in position. I then restarted the engine, reversed back a bit more aaand thank god, the anchor dug in. Ryan was still swimming back to the boat in the gathering gloom, and I’ve not had to put on the lights for him to get out before! 

We did a little debrief over dinner that night. Should we have stayed at the lunch time anchorage? Technically, no, but from a safety perspective, I think yes. We should have risked it and begged forgiveness rather than risk the shallow reef in poor light. We had absolutely no margin for error in that trip and were very lucky nothing went wrong. Other folks reading this might be like, what’s the big deal? Just anchor at night! But it’s genuinely not easy to anchor in a new place where you know nothing about the land or sea. The only saving grace of that trip? We finally saw dolphins!