Story and photos by Nancy Birnbaum
As Guadeloupe gears up for the 22nd Tour de la Guadeloupe July 5 to 13, we present this reminiscence and photo essay from Traditour 2023.
It was a spectacular day for a race and we were fortunate to have ‘front-row seats’ on a mooring ball in the anchorage of Deshaies, Guadeloupe. My husband, Jann, and I were in the Caribbean on our second cruise, this time on S/V Sweet Escape, a Leopard 40 catamaran.
Though I wasn’t familiar with these traditional wooden sailing canoes, we were in the right place to enjoy the start of the 21st edition of the Traditour, the traditional sailing Tour de la Guadeloupe, a physically demanding race that consists of ten stages over eight days of racing and ends in the place where the traditional Saintoise races began.
The Round Les Saintes Race was inaugurated in 2000, and in 2005, the class of boats and the races were made official by the French Sailing Organization. The boats must be made of wood, with masts of wood or bamboo, as well as wooden cleats and pulleys without winches. Crews consist of six team members, or seven, if they are women.
The 2023 start was by the north of Basse-Terre, where 30 crews (including several female and mixed-gender teams) were lined up to battle it out. The new course is said to favor close-hauled navigation rather than a broad reach.
We met Antoine LeFort, who was participating on Dehe Vwal (#16), when he came out to Sweet Escape to collect the mooring fee, and I discovered that he had a team in the race and has been racing in the Traditour for the past five years. Coming ashore, we discovered all of the boats up on the beach, crews busy preparing their rigs and sails for the start the next morning.
Jann and I were up early on race day. We motored out to the starting line and although the wind was light and the rain threatened, they had a good start. We followed for some time until the fleet sailed around Point Du Gros Morne.
We left Deshaies and sailed over to Îles Des Saintes to see the fleet at the start of the sixth leg, sailing out of the Terre-de-Haut anchorage to the starting line by Anse Devan, then back into the anchorage and around the windward side of Îlet a Cabrit.
We saw the finish of the race in Sainte-Anne on television as we checked out of our hotel. Jean-Félix Forbin on Guadeloupe Port Caraibes was the 2023 winner. Vito by Marc Forbin came in second ahead of Jonas Astorga on Région Guadeloupe.
Nancy Birnbaum is a U.S. Coast Guard Licensed captain with over 40 years of boating experience. She is a freelance journalist currently on her second cruise. Her work has appeared in Blue Water Sailing, Yachting Times, BoatU.S.Magazine, and Southern Boating Magazine. She is a commodore of the Seven Seas Cruising Association. Read her blog on sailing Sweet Escape at nancybirnbaum.com.
