Les Saintes Suits

If you can snag a mooring, you are in for some good boat living...

I have long realized that I am not really out here to live like I am on endless charter: hitting all the hot anchorages, eating and drinking too much, and filling my time with cruising guide activities, snorkeling, and island touring. Instead, I am out here to live on the water, and find anchorages and harbors that make the living interesting and conducive to writing, reading, musing, and immersing myself in the natural world.

Over the last few years I have developed a set of informal criteria to evaluate how conducive a location is to this very specific Laughing Gull lifestyle. (Ocean passages are a different story, naturally, and have an entirely different set of criteria).

First, a decent anchorage or harbor that is protected from normal weather and seas. Ideally with clean water for swimming and water-making, and breeze to keep things cool. I could go on and on about what I think makes a good anchorage or harbor (is there a place to land a dinghy? Is the holding good for an anchor?), but you get the gist.

Second, beautiful landscapes and vistas, or a cool town with good provisioning, cafe and restaurant options, and some roads or trails to run on.

Third, interesting people about, on boats or on land (sometimes solitude is its own reward, but socializing is in the genes).

Last, a generally peaceful ambience. No jet skis. No party boats all around. No unrelenting inundation from cruise ships. No constant wakes.

Bonus points are awarded for: remoteness/solitude, vegan restaurant options (especially vegan pizza), and good ice cream and bakeries.

No place gets a perfect score on all counts. But my brain runs the algorithm and spits out a pretty accurate evaluation of how suited any one place is to my particular sensibilities. Example of a town high on the list? Newport. Example of an anchorage? Nonsuch Bay.

I mention this because I am currently on a mooring off Terre-De-Haute in an island group just south of Guadeloupe called Les Saintes. I didn’t plan to be here today, and had intended to sail to Pointe-A-Pitre on Guadeloupe. But this location is hitting high in my criteria, and when that happens you have to pause and burrow in a bit.

There are a few minor point deductions. Medium-size cruise ships do stop in (but not day after day), and ferries keep the day visitors flowing. The harbor is a bit exposed and can get rolly (it is amazing how swell can wrap around into almost any bay). And there is no close-in public anchorage (visiting boats are supposed to take a mooring—though I have scouted out a few spots where I think I could anchor if the authorities didn’t object). Happily, my mooring location is one of the most protected locations in the mooring field (there is nothing like the satisfaction of lucking into a good anchor or mooring address).

Establishing residence here isn’t easy. The transient moorings are first-come, first-serve, and getting one on a busy day is like swimming in a school of sharks all trying to eat the same prey. No mercy if offered, and no courtesy is extended. It is every boat for itself, and I would be surprised if there weren’t occasional collisions between boats refusing to yield on final approach.

I spent a stressful hour circling through the mooring field, hoping to get lucky. Eventually, I saw the crew of the sailboat that was on my current mooring moving about, and confirmed they were getting ready to leave. So I hovered nearby, cleasrly waiting for that specific mooring. A newly arrived French catamaran saw me waiting and decided to hover, too, a bigger and faster shark apparently intending to swoop in and poach the mooring. What he didn’t know is that I had—presciently, and prompted by a combination of cunning and paranoia— also secured permission from the departing sailboat to put a friend in a dinghy on the mooring to help him release his lines and be ready to take mine.

The French cat couldn’t see the dinghy, which lay on the other side of the departing sailboat, and punched his throttles as soon as the departing sailboat’s lines were dropped. He was closer and more maneuverable, and was no doubt cackling and twirling his moustache as he surged forward to get a boathook on the mooring. He got a rude shock as the departing sailboat drifted back and suddenly revealed a dinghy tied onto the mooring. For a brief moment, the big cat pressed on and I wondered whether he would simply try and bump the dinghy off with his bows, or perhaps use his boathook like a lance. But better sense finally prevailed, and he came to an abrupt stop, turned, and motored away, his dignity and larcenous plans in shreds.

It is a poor reflection on my character that I took pleasure in watching him do circles for at least another 30 minutes before he finally secured a mooring in a relatively exposed location. But I had found a new reason to be grateful to be part of a sailing gang of Dawgs who help one another out, and paid it forward by helping another Dawg, arriving a few days later, get onto the last mooring available with just minutes to spare as another cat beelined for it at high speed from the other side of the mooring field. In this day and age it would not be that hard to have someone organize a waiting list (as Block Island’s Great Salt Pond does), or to create an app that obviates the need for all the mooring field jousting. But c’est la vie.

Once on the mooring, I became a relaxed human again, and peace settled over the harbor. The town proved as charming as expected, with good food, chilled wine, and numerous ice cream vendors. I found a good out and back run to a beach on the other side of the island. High scores all around. I didn’t feel like going anywhere for a while.

Next week will be a jump to St. John’s in the US Virgin Islands. I think St. John’s will meet a lot of Laughing Gull life criteria as well. Look forward to it.

Anthropocene Notes:

1. We can talk all we want about the rapid buildout of solar, wind and non-carbon energy sources, but the bottom line is: if global carbon emissions are going up we are headed in the wrong direction. And in 2024, according to the annual Global Carbon Budget report, they climbed to a new record, driven by growth in fossil fuel consumption.

There is a lot if interesting nuance, though. Key takeaways:

• Emissions emissions are projected to decrease significantly in the EU (down 3.8%) and slightly in the US (down 0.6%) in 2024. They are expected to increase slightly in China (up 0.2%), and increase significantly in India (up 4.6%) and the rest of the world (up 1.6%, including international shipping and aviation).

• Global emissions from coal increased by 0.2% in 2024 compared to 2023, while oil emissions increased 0.9% and gas emissions increased by 2.4%. Emissions from cement and other sources fell by 2.8%.

• Global land-use emissions clocked in at 4.2GtCO2 in 2024. This represents a 0.5GtCO2 increase over 2023 and was primarily driven by wildfire emissions linked to deforestation and forest degradation in South America. Overall, land-use emissions have decreased by around 28% since their peak in the late-1990s, with a particularly large drop in the past decade.

• While the land sink was quite weak in 2023 – leading to speculation that it may be on a path toward collapse – it appears to have largely recovered back to close to its average for the past decade.

• If global emissions remain at current levels, the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C (with a 50% chance) will be exhausted in the next six years. Carbon budgets to limit warming to 1.7C and 2C would similarly be used up in 15 and 27 years, respectively.

• The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 422.5 parts per million (ppm) in 2024, 2.8ppm above 2023 and 52% above pre-industrial levels.

Lots of work to do, humans of Earth.

2. I often say I am 98% vegan because I eat vegetarian when vegan is not really available. And also because life is too short to give up good ice cream. And also because veganism is more accessible if it is not so absolutist (and a 98% vegan diet delivers 98% of the benefits). And also because all there is no human life (well maybe a Jain living in a remote retreat) that doesn’t directly or indirectly kill, so my goal is to minimize impact (the vast reduction in my car miles, for example, has pretty much eliminated any contribution I might make to roadkill).

   But I like the concept of Vegan-Plus (“vegan plus some other things I wanna eat every now and then”), mentioned in this article, titled “The Vegan Hunter.” Even if I completely reject the idea that the “plus” should be a hunted animal. Nice try, though.

3. Ireland was just hit by the strongest storm it has ever endured (basically a winter hurricane). Climate-warming-related “abnormal weather” is now the new normal weather, and policymakers aren’t sure how to handle what is happening.

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