"Perhaps you need to put a disclaimer on here" said Dave as he looked at some of the photos I had taken that afternoon.

"Hmm, and why??" I wondered.
"Well, they're pretty disgusting" he replied.
"True that, but it IS what it is" I countered, yet totally agreed with him, at how disgusting it all was.

But before we get to our semi-disgusting job of the afternoon, we have other real life drama-like happenings of life onboard Banyan to share with you.

With our WaterMaker currently out of commission, water hoarding has quickly become the status quo of life for us. Since we had emptied much of our tanks to flush the WaterMaker out of its nesting place and onto Dougie's repair table, it was a use a drop here and use a drop there type of c'est la vie from now on.

And so yesterday morning had us confirming, with only one green light left on our aft tank, the need to get ourselves to Simpson Bay Marina to buy ourselves some water.



There's been a huge increase in water traffic these past two days, with incoming participants for the Heineken Regatta milling about the place, and we've noticed that the, or rather ahem our anchorage, was starting to get a little crowded.

You know what happens when you leave your "just perfect spot" right? There's the development of an instant fear reflex that OMG someone is going to gasp, grab our spot!! Imagine? The nerve...

So we discussed and then strategically timed our hopefully secretive manoeuvres to coincide with the bridge openings. In other words, allow the incoming crowd to get settled, and then we would quietly slink away, in the hopes that no one would really want to up-anchor and steal our spot.

Some carefully choreographed moves later (bow tarp rolled aside, fenders out and hung on the lines with care, bow/stern lines looped on the cleats and ready to deploy) and the engine was soon purring it's eagerness to get going.



Not even ten minutes later we rounded the corner and had the thankfully empty fuel dock in range. Dave radioed in for permission to come alongside, which was quickly granted, and Fuel Dock lady was there waiting to grab our lines and pull us in.

Dave busied himself getting the jerry jug of gasoline filled up,



while I ran over to Business Point to get our freshly washed, dried and folded laundry from Hyacinthe.



By the time I got back, Dave had our cockpit rinsed out,



our tanks almost filled, and all that gave me just enough time to fill up our water jugs,



and wash/rinse the heads, and voila, job's done and we were ready to boogey back.



Dave tackled the fenders as I drove Banyan back to the anchorage,



and,

"Look honey, there's our spot, empty and waiting for us!" I gleefully exclaimed,



and then quickly continued "Wow, look at that... !"

Sometimes, as we watch these impressive aeronautical beasts of technology take off/land, we can't help but think, if only for a mere morbid moment in time, what a catastrophe could result...



Anyhow,



we dropped the hook a few feet away from where she had last lay, just as we heard the engines of the KLM jet successfully soar overhead.

The other day, we posted on our Sailing Banyan Facebook Page an impressive PUCKER FACTOR photo album of a blue boat barely squeezing into her spot at Palapa Marina.

As we drove by today, I snapped some more shots of just how much room she had on either side of her,



Not much eh?



Incroyable !!

"So, what job can we tackle this afternoon" inquired eager-beaver Dave, presumably already knowing the answer to his own question, as he was busy gathering the tools needed for this afternoon's operations.



Loaded with our bucket-ful of goodies, we were soon zoom-zooming under the new Causeway Bridge,



past the man-made something or other that is being built by the round-a-bout,



and towards Grand Ilet (Explorer Island), bang-smack in the middle of the French Side of things.



This is a well-suggested spot for cruisers to come if they want to do some dirty dinghy work, as evidenced by the tarp and work table and scattered derelict items laying around.



What follows is not pretty. It is not a clean story. It is not a nice photo of unspoilt beaches or glorious sunsets or beautiful palm trees or ice-cold RumPunch type of drinks.

It is quite an ugly and slimy type of photo. It is perhaps even a smelly type of photo. It is a scrunch your nose as you know you have to deal with this long slippery slimy seaweedy type of grass, nested creatures and encrusted barnacles type of photo.

This is Reality Blogging at its truest type of photo.

And truth-be-told, we're almost embarrassed and just a little ashamed to post this type-of-photo.

This is what happened to our dinghy bottom as it sat in Sint Maarten Lagoon for well over a month, without any routine cleaning procedures.



Nasty.



Nastier !



And not once in our two years of travels have we seen this before... several shells had made Quahog's bottom their home. That took a bit of extra elbow grease to scrape off.

The next hour or so was spent sweating and scraping, the sun blaring its hot heat on us, not a breath of wind to be felt as we were sheltered by the trees,



Scrape. Scrub. Rinse. Repeat. Scrape. Scrub. Rinse. Repeat.



Pretty soon she was looking almost normal again,



and we got her re-assembled, dinghied past the Witch's Tit (again, I wonder, who names these places and like WTF?)



and headed back home to Banyan, where we can happily report that having a clean bottom definitely increases your zoom-zooming speed, and where, after all that work, we immediately had a shower, and then thirstily and eagerly (and quite thankfully) downed a glass or two of ice cold water.