10 February Is this the last one in the Caribbean?

Bas du Fort marina is heavily booked and can only offer us 4 nights’ berth. (Carrying a 35 to 40kg can of paint in a dinghy to a boat on anchor isn’t ideal, better to wheel it in a cart along the dock to load it on board.)

Four days is enough time to rent a car and drive out to the industrial zone in Jarry to buy what could be the last 20L of black Jotun Seaforce 90 in the whole Caribbean, a visit to the hypermarket and exchange our depleted Soda Stream cartridges.

You might be wondering why it is important to buy this particular brand of anti foul when there are other brands available? To apply a different brand over the old one it would have a different chemical structure and there’s no guarantee that it would adhere. You would need to remove every last trace of the existing anti foul base before applying the new. Applying the same-on-same product ensures chemical harmony.

We pick up our rental car and arrive at the paint shop in Jarry. The bright and smiling young assistant speaks as much English as I do French. Basic, enough to get by with, but with Google to translate the finer nuances we are communicating well.

He has six 20L cans of Seaforce 90 in stock, only one is black pigment, and they are all past their advisory use by date by one month. The window between manufacture date and use by date is six months, not a lot when you have to consider the time needed for worldwide shipping and custom clearance.

David sucks in air through his teeth, kicks a metaphorical tyre, shakes the tin and puts on a suitably doubtful facial expression. Do we take it or not? What’s the alternative? Should we risk it? The shop has good AC keeping us, and the stock, cool. David’s happy that the contents sound and feel to be in good order. It’s definitely liquid not a solid mass. Heavy because of the high copper content.

Our delightful smiling assistant taps on his computer for a while and then asks would a 30% discount allay our doubts? More pacing and thinking from David. I wait. David turns and says ‘’yes’’. He feels the paint will be good to use.

We now have what is possibly the last can of black Jotun Seaforce 90 in the whole Caribbean and with a good discount.

8 February Return to Point-a-Pitre for essentials

It’s been a delightful and relaxed month in the Saints but now we need to return to Point-a-Pitre for wants and needs. I want to have a part of my scuba kit serviced; my octopus is free flowing and no matter what we do we can’t fix it so a trip to the equipment doctor is required.

We also need to buy a certain brand of anti foul for haul out later this year. For the last four times we’ve anti fouled we’ve used a Norwegian paint, Jotun Seaforce 90, bought the last couple of times from a supplier in Trinidad. Currently they don’t have any in stock. Don’t know when they will so it is time to think laterally. Jotun is from Norway so perhaps they have agents in Europe, possibly France. Fred Marine in Marina Bas du Fort has successfully imported other items for us from France. Could I find a solution by importing from France?

Mr Google directed me to a French stockist who just happen to have outlets in both Martinique and Guadeloupe! A quick email confirms that the Guadeloupe shop has one 20L pail of black in stock and they will hold it for us. Sometimes luck is on your side.

30 January Scooter day

For the craic of it we hired an electric scooter today to ride every road on Terre Haut and to facilitate, in the meaning of making easier, for the walk up to La Vigie du Chameau. A fort on top of the highest point in the Saints. The translation of La Vigie du Chameau is somewhat baffling, Camel Lookout. Camel’s in the Caribbean? Someone’s name? Does the profile of the hill resemble a camel hump? No. I don’t know. I do know from leaving the scooter at the bottom of the road (road closed to vehicles) it took 45 minutes to reach the top.

A couple of years ago we walked a couple of miles from the dinghy dock in town, climbed the peak to Camel’s Lookout crawled back to our dinghy exhausted. It was a breeze this time!

We drove every road (there’s not many on a small island), visited every beach, stopped for lunch, visited Fort Napoleon, drove second and third times over the same roads, looked at the airport building and the cemetery (on the same road) and it was still only 2.30pm. We returned the scooter at 3pm and dinghied to Jackster to drink water and recover. After so much exercise and effort I needed a rest.

Crawen beach

Pompierre beach

dreaming of riding away from it all

resting at Camel Lookout

can we go home now?

11 January 2026 Ilet a Cabrit

Back to a favourite spot and back to just hanging out, busy doing nothing after a month of ‘work’ in the marina.

cruise ship day

no cruise ship day

Ilet a Cabrit (Goat island) is one of the small, uninhabited islands of Les Saintes with 13 boat moorings, a dive mooring and beautiful clear water. We could have stayed on a mooring in town, but this is quieter and it’s not too far in the dinghy.

I feel like I’m on holiday; dipping in the water for a swim, time to read books and time to chat. Our one commitment is to feed the two feral cats who live here. They’ve been here for about a year, both female and both look healthy. I think visitors give then morsels from their packed lunch. We take a can of cat food, nibbles and freshwater each evening. Without much imagination we named one Ginger and the other Snowy.  

Miss Snowy

Miss Ginger

For our Polly David has been catching these silvery fish for her.  Such is his love he fillets them we cut them into small pieces before freezing.  Polly's a pescatarian - no meat is passing her lips, no tinned cat food, not tinned tuna.  I wouldn't say she's spoilt, but... 

Fish for Polly

We are such softies, but think if it were Polly we’d like to know she is fed and watered each day.

New year’s Eve 2025

Another year passed and a new one to begin at midnight, but do you celebrate midnight in your host country or your native country? We chose to do both. That way we could have dinner and champagne at 8pm while watching the broadcast of the London fireworks, go to bed for a while and then get up to watch the local fireworks at local midnight. How cunning are we?

New Year’s eve is a time to reminisce and for us it was counting back on previous New Years since we’ve lived on Jackster.

2008 was our first and memorable as a disaster. We were taking advantage of a weather window to travel from Luperon, DR to Puerto Rico and 30 minutes into 2009 the forward gear failed leaving us floating in a windless night and with 180nm to go. Read more at

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2009/06/1-jan-2009-happy-new-year.html

2009 Cartagena with friends and strolling around the old city.

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2010/01/31-december-2009-new-years-eve.html

2010 New Zealand, Urquharts Bay, Whangerei. Beautiful scenery and a quiet celebration

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-years-eve-exercise-to-eat.html

2011 New Zealand, Russell with Chris and Dave of Chrisandaver’s Dream

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2012/01/saturday-31-december-new-years-eve-in.html

2012 Sydney, The BEST time; fireworks, best friend Cathy who was the first to call me The Jackster

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2013/01/new-years-eve-2012-sydney-extravaganza.html

2013 Thailand, Phuket party town

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2013/01/new-years-eve-2012-sydney-extravaganza.html

2014 Palau and a last minute change of plans meant NY on anchor and not at sea.

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2015/01/new-years-eve-2014.html

2015 Thailand, Nai Harn with Amy and Andrew

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-year-2016-nai-harn.html

2016 Thailand, Nai Harn before embarking on our passage across the Indian Ocean

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-year-2016-nai-harn.html

2017 South Africa, Richards Bay on the other side of the Indian Ocean

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2018/01/new-years-eve-in-richards-bay.html

2018 Colombia, Cartagena for a second time

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-years-eve.html

2019 Cuba, Cayo Levisa resort. The buffet.

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2020/02/31-december-2019-new-years-eve.html

2020 Antigua, English Harbour in Covid 19 times

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2021/01/new-years-eve-2020.html

2021 Grenada, St Georges and Port Louis Marina still with Covid 19 restrictions

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2022/01/31-december-2021-new-years-eve-old.html

2022 Guadeloupe, Marina Bas do Fort French celebrations

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2023/04/new-years-eve-2022.html

2023 Guadeloupe, Marina Bas du Fort

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2024/01/31-december-2023-happy-new-year-2024.html

2024 Guadeloupe, Marina Bas du Fort. Again

http://sv-jackster.blogspot.com/2025/01/new-years-eve-2024.html

It's been a memorable journey.  Happy New Year to you all and thank you for following our blog.

30 December Provisioning bonanza

A pre-departure (from the marina in 5 days) tradition is to rent a car for a couple of days and venture out hunting down and gathering goods and provisions. It’s a military operation with a list of shops to visit in the most time efficient order and a sub order list of what we need from that establishment.

David’s in the driver’s seat and I’m co-driver with the clipboard. At the end of the mission we had a new bike tyre and selection of inner tubes for future punctures from Decathlon, 6m of sunbrella to make a new rear sunshade, a new cockpit dining chair after the other collapsed, 60 cans of Punk IPA brewed in Scotland, a few (?) select bottles of French wine, enough food to fill the freezer, fridge, store cupboards for a siege and 3 months supply of kibbles and cat litter.

Job’s a good ‘en.

Boxing Day 2025

That’s it. Christmas is over and a return to situation normal, ie housework and boat jobs. David was back in the engine room to check on the new fuel pump he’d fitted on the genset yesterday afternoon and I defrosted the fridge and got a haircut.

Here in Guadeloupe shops are open as normal today. In the UK they would have shut before Christmas Eve and not be back until after New Year. I’m happy, neither of us are suited for a life of sloth.

Walking back along the dock after my haircut I heard a cheery ‘hello’ coming from our neighbours boat and there was David on board Humerus having a chat with Geoff and Karen. It would have been rude not to join them for a glass of wine and a most convivial chat. Humerus is a new Oyster 56 and Geoff and Karen are preparing to join the Oyster World rally which starts in Antigua in a couple of weeks. We wished them well and look forward to following their adventures though they’ll do the trip in 15 months compared to our 10 years.

Christmas Day 2025

When it’s just the two of us and the cat there are no rules, no ‘must do’s’, except for me it was a no boat jobs, no housework day. Not quite for David.

We’d decorated Jackster with our small Christmas tree (which Polly views as a toy to attack), coloured lights strung around the salon and, new this year, a string of white solar powered lights for the cockpit. Finally we have solar power!

We eat our Christmas dinner in the evening when it’s cooler. This years’ menu was a bottle of champagne and fois gras and then a pork wellington, aka a posh sausage roll. Of course this left David with a free afternoon to change the fuel pump on the generator which had a slight leak. 

genset fuel pump

Today’s job, the fuel pump, is a small generic item which he felt would be improve the performance of the genset by replacing with the spare which he had in stock. Once that was done we went the traditional post, or in our case, pre dinner walk. Polly did her own thing today.

Let's begin

a happy Christmas day

21 December New running rigging

When we had the issue of the main sail halyard snapping back in July we replaced all the sail halyards and some of the most used lines. Since then we’ve been looking at the old lines and thinking ‘we ought to replace these too’.

With five chandleries all carrying a stock of lines in Bas du Fort we were sure we’d find everything we needed...and we did.

We bought 40m x 14mm for two genoa sheets, 22m of 12mm for the main sheet, 20m x 10mm low stretch high performance rope for the two genoa car travellers and 11.5m x 10mm of the same for the main sheet car traveller. For the rest of the lines we could have regular standard 10mm and in different colours; two x 16m in light blue for the whisker pole lifts, 10.5m of green for the mizzen out haul, 12m of blue black marl for the mizzen control sheet and 16.5m of red black marl for the passerelle line.

In all we replaced164m of old lines with new. What happened to the line we discarded? the dock master took it for the January carnival. He explained that there’s a tradition on the island of making carnival whips and by giving our old lines and it stops them stealing ropes.

out with the old

genoa sheets & grey non stretch

old on left, new on right

19 December Boat jobs Part II

For a while we’ve had a slight diesel leak on one of the injectors on the engine. This became the next job for David while we’re here in the marina. Removing and opening the injector he reseated the copper washer and added a grease known Coppa Slip that he used to use on his rally car engines. We visited all the marine stores and found nothing like it, but in a small engine repair shop in the boat yard there was a pot of the exact grease that had been sitting on the shelf for more than 12 years. The chap gave us a small amount and now no leak on the injector!

We’ve also had a small oil leak on the generator which David suspected to be the front crank shaft seal. This was fixed with a second cycle ride to SKIF in the industrial zone of Jarry who, again, had the right size in stock. David fitted it and ticked off another niggling issue.

There are still plenty more jobs and problems to keep us busy, such as the puncture on David’s back tyre picked up on the way to the seal shop. Luckily it was a slow puncture and we had the tyre pump with us and we swapped bikes for the ride home (smaller person riding the slow puncture). The supermarket didn’t have the correct size inner tube in stock and we’ve run out of puncture patches so time to get creative. With rubber from an old seal and 2 part dinghy repair glue David fixed it...until we rent a car and can get to a bike shop to buy a new stock on inner tubes. We need our bikes!