The Saints on April Fool's Day!

It was in 1493 that Colombus sailed into this archipelago, on November 1st, All Saints Day. Los Santos is now Les Saintes.

We start off at 9am, April Fool's Day. By 10:30 we have steady light winds from behind; a pleasant sail at four knots.
Until suddenly it says,"STOP!" A sort of scraping noise under the hull and then "Babette" screetches to a halt!?! Two clear plastic water bottles bound together with blue plastic twine and, quite a distance beyond, a little whitish ball: we're caught in a net! A fishy sort of feeling of being trapped. Or more like a fly. How do we escape from this nasty spider's web?
Cpt. Oernulf, in his swim trunks, knife between his teeth, goes overboard to get an underwater view of the situation. Up onboard again, the propeller released, we're off. Keep a sharp eye out ahead!

By 13:30 we're again anchored beside "Fatuhiva", now in Le Bourg des Saintes. These small islands, a part of Guadaloupe, are only 17 nm from Dominica, but on a different planet. We're back in the EC, the European Community, with the Euro and the subsidies that go with it.
The little village has a pedestrian-only main road lined with pretty small shops with gingerbread edging. Flowers bloom in the well-kept gardens. The smooth asphalt roads are full of small rental scooters. Even the volcanic hills are lower, more rounded, less wild than in Dominica. In the harbor a handful of sailboats are bobbing, not a single boat-salesman or dinghy-watcher to be seen.

As darkness quickly falls we can see the blinking city-lights of Guadaloupe in the distance. That will be our last French Antilles stop.