A Minted Location day guide
Dock & Dine in Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe's dock-and-dine answer is a fuel dock that opens at seven and a marina you can walk out of.
Start with the useful part. The station d'avitaillement sits opposite the capitainerie, is reachable "par voie maritime et terrestre", and is open 07:00 to 19:00 every day of the year including public holidays. Four fuels — unleaded, diesel, and duty-free unleaded and diesel — a 120 m² chandlery-and-grocery with food, drink, hygiene, fishing gear and bait, a snack bar, and bunkering from 5,000 litres. In a region where fuel docks keep bankers' hours, a 19:00 close every single day is worth planning a passage around.
The marina's own quays are the walk-ashore. Bas-du-Fort publishes shopping centres, restaurants, bars, a bakery, a supermarket, a pharmacy, doctors, a dentist, a laundry and car hire on site, with drinking water, power and Wi-Fi on the pontoons and the whole site under CCTV to ISPS standard. You berth, you step off, you eat. That is the mechanism here — not a guest dock at a restaurant.
Everywhere else in the archipelago, dining works the way it always has: take a berth or a buoy, and go in on foot or by tender. Rivière-Sens lists a restaurant "à proximité" and its quays are a short walk from it; Marie-Galante is an anchorage and a tender ride ashore.
Two published costs are worth knowing before you plan a day ashore. The forfait passage gives you the sanitary block and Wi-Fi for a 50% rate, and it is explicitly time-boxed "pour une durée exclusivement comprise entre 8h et 16h" — 08:00 to 16:00 only. And the boat taxi to and from a boat on the Îlet Cochon moorings is a published €25 per run, which is what dining ashore actually costs if you are on a buoy rather than a pontoon.
Water and power are metered now. Since 1 February 2025 both are billed individually on a pre-credited badge — €8 per m³ of water, €0.40 per kWh — so credit the badge at the desk and budget for the meter.
So the working instruction for Guadeloupe is: take the berth, not the tender. The chart below runs the archipelago south to north — Les Saintes and its mooring field, past Marie-Galante and round to Rivière-Sens, into the Petit Cul-de-Sac Marin and Bas-du-Fort, out to the Îlet Cochon buoys and up to the no-anchor waters of the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin.
The stops, as their own docks describe them
| Spot | Where | Arriving by boat |
|---|---|---|
| The Bas-du-Fort fuel dock and clearance deskThe practical dock-and-dine in Guadeloupe, and the hours are the reason. The station d'avitaillement is "accessible par voie maritime et terrestre" and open "de 7h à 19h tous les jours y compris les jours fériés" — four fuels including duty-free unleaded and diesel, a 120 m² shop stocked for going to sea, a snack bar, and bunkering from 5,000 litres. The capitainerie next door handles "les démarches administratives et douanières" and prices online clearance at €10 with a dedicated computer. The forfait passage buys the sanitary block and Wi-Fi at a 50% rate but is time-boxed "pour une durée exclusivement comprise entre 8h et 16h". A boat taxi to and from the Îlet Cochon moorings is published at €25. Ashore on the site: restaurants, bars, bakeries, two supermarkets, a pharmacy, doctors, a dentist, a laundry and car hire — you berth and you walk. | Opposite the capitainerie, Marina Bas-du-Fort | Fuel 07:00–19:00 every day including public holidays · online clearance €10 · forfait passage 08:00–16:00 only |
| The marina's restaurants and barsBas-du-Fort lists its restaurants, bars, cocktail bars, delicatessens and wine cellars as tenants across four shopping centres, all of them reached on foot from the pontoons. Dining here works from your berth rather than from a guest dock — which in Guadeloupe costs you nothing, because the shops, bakeries, supermarkets, pharmacy and doctors are inside the marina rather than a taxi ride away. Rivière-Sens lists a restaurant "à proximité", a short walk from its quays; Marie-Galante is an anchorage and a tender ride ashore. | Bas-du-Fort, Rivière-Sens, Les Saintes and Marie-Galante | Take a berth and walk |
Dockage notes are what each restaurant publishes on its own site — space is first-come and dinner-hour rafting is real, so hail ahead. Where a venue states nothing about docking, we say so rather than guess.
Planning more than lunch?
We represent buyers wherever the right boat sits — shortlisting, surveying and sea-trialing on the buyer's side of the table. Tell us the mission and we'll tell you which boat, and which berth, it calls for.