What was estimated to be a 24 hour passage, including 15 hours anchored at the mouth of Guadeloupe’s Riviere Salee, has ballooned into an estimated 72 hour ordeal, with further complications not ruled out. The tale of Job comes to mind, at least inasmuch as pestilence is concerned. But enough of this prologue. Feast on our misfortune, which occurred thusly:
We weighed anchor in Antigua amid a fine mist at 7 in the morning. The mist turned to a downpour shortly after we left Falmouth Harbor, but cleared after an hour and left us a sunny day with good wind as we headed south to Guadeloupe. Our trusted cruising guide to the area, Anguilla to Dominica, by a Mr. Donald M. Street, recommended arriving at the northern bridge spanning the Riviere Salee before 3 pm in order to get a mooring before darkness, the bridge being too low for us to pass under. This bridge, says Street, opens for traffic only once each day, at 5:30 am, and not at all on Sunday. As it was Friday, we approached the mouth of the river confident that we could moor up and pass through the next day, anchoring outside the port of Pointe-a-Pitre Saturday morning. Our engine had other ideas.
We were in the mouth of the river, some quarter-mile short of the bridge, in a narrow channel banked on each side by thick mangroves and nothing else. At this point, our engine stopped. We let our gimped vessel drift as far as its momentum would carry it, then dropped anchors off the bow and stern in order to avoid swinging into the trees. I dove on the propeller to see if it had snagged on something. It had not, although it didn’t seem to be able to spin. We were able to start the engine, but putting it in gear caused it to immediately stall. From this, we concluded that our transmission was the problem. All we had to do was learn how it worked. Hours of poring over ancient manuals yielded few ideas and no results. Aaron suggested that the transmission might need oil. A check of the dipstick revealed it to be bone dry, so we filled it up and tried the engine. Still no success. The manuals might have been in Greek.
Suddenly, we heard shouts, these being in French. It was a trio of fishermen, who were irate that our boat was blocking a navigational buoy in the river. Once we made them understand that we weren’t there by choice, they were more sympathetic and gave us a tow to the moorings at the bridge. Despite our plight, the scene was beautiful; the dark fishermen in their low fishing boat illuminated the way with a candle lantern, a full moon rose over the mangroves, and the river rippled with phosphorescence. We thanked the fishermen with a few cans of Coors Light and bade them farewell.
Though safely moored, there was still the matter of the engine to attend to. We still had no ideas, were covered in oil, and we hadn’t eaten more than a Powerbar and some pretzels all day, anticipating that we would reach the mooring five hours earlier before making a big meal. Famished, we decided to take the dinghy into town the next day to bend over for a mechanic. Almost as an afterthought, Aaron suggested trying the engine once more before making dinner. It sputtered and started. Forward, reverse, it didn’t matter! It worked! We quickly shut it off and cheered our victory with pasta and tuna.
Our mirth was tempered by the fetid swamp we found ourselves moored in for the night. The airport lay but a few miles away, each takeoff and landing making our boat quake. The night was without breeze and stiflingly hot. Power-boaters screamed by, leaving our boat wallowing in their wake. Worst of all, we suffered massive defeat against the veritable blitzkrieg of mosquitoes, gnats, and fleas. All of these things combined to make sleep nearly impossible. We woke at 5 am to be doubly ready for the opening of the bridge. We were disturbed, however, to see that the sailboat moored in front of us the previous night was gone. As 5:30 came and went, there was no movement in the bridge operator’s booth. Our radio calls were in vain. It dawned on us that we’d missed the opening.
Baffled, we checked and rechecked Street’s guide, the time zones, anything that would explain what happened. The explanation eventually emerged: Donald Street is a f—ing idiot, whose buffoonery consigned us not to one, but two more days in the reeking, infested, pitre dish of a river. As we later discovered, the north bridge opens at 4:30 am, the south bridge at 5 am. What ring of hell was this? Reflecting, we tried to calm ourselves with that ancient adage, “It Could Be Worse.” Could it? We supposed that the fishermen could have tried to kill us and taken our boat. However, wouldn’t that have been an ideal opportunity to vent our frustrations over the engine? Perhaps President Bush could have decided to punish Guadeloupe’s lack of support for the war on Iraq by sending a host of bombs raining down. Even that, though, would at least kill the insects.
Filthy, exhausted, and demoralized, we took the dinghy through the river the next day and landed in Guadeloupe. We walked to Pointe-a-Pitre from the marina and strolled the various markets of the bustling city. Impressed by the heavy French influence, we found a cafe and enjoyed a breakfast of pastries and coffee while we read an English newspaper. Afterwards, we walked around some more before grabbing some bread, cheese, and fois gras at a supermarket and enjoying a lunch in the Place de la Victoire. We returned for an evening meal and another try at sleep, ruing the day of heat and mosquitoes ahead, and dreaming of any place but here.
If ever we escape, we will be sure to pass along the news, dear reader. If not, leave our corpses to rot in this horrible bog where our optimism has already preceded us by sinking dead into the quagmire below.