PARADISE LOST, PEDICURE FOUND
10 March 2018 | Rodney Bay, St Lucia
Ag/hot but cool feet
It was A Good Plan - to get up at the crack Monday morning, be first in the queue to clear out of Grenada at Port Louis Customs & Immigration and set Sail non stop for the 120 mile passage to Martinique...30 hours approx...but...
The Grenadan customs guys obviously don’t observe strict office hours. Brian sat outside the office for an hour before they sauntered up and far from first in line he was behind a charter boat with 12 guests and a super yacht with full crew. All to fill in forms, stamp passports and anything else in the paper business and and and...we didn’t leave till 11.30am and the Good Plan had cracked.
That set the pattern: as we struggled to get the dinghy back on its davits out at sea (it can’t hang off the back when you’re parked stern to sadly), we managed to pull the fixing to which the davit hanging cord attaches out and we now had a hole in our dinghy. And nothing to hang it from. Curses but lots of folk tow their dinghies although not always with an inch wide hole in the bottom. And we would likely be anchoring in Martinique so we would need the dinghy to get ashore. Clearly we needed Another Plan.
First let us abandon our 30 hour passage and go for a short hop to the idyllic and much loved Sandy Island which is part of Grenada and could do it without having to clear in, having just cleared out...you’re allowed 24 hours to actually leave after you’ve done the paperworkarama. Btw, this is what it’s going to be like for us all after Brexit. Get the carbon paper and rubber ink stamps ready.
We got to Sandy Island at dusk. Actually it only looked like dusk. It was 4pm and just very dull. Windy. Big waves. Not ideal conditions to try to sort out the dinghy but we picked up the last buoy and set to work. I nearly lost my life many times including being squashed senseless between dinghy and Brag but we cobbled together a means of getting the holey dinghy out of the water, baled out, wooden bung bunged in the hole and dangling by a complex system of ropes from the stern. It was only then we realised why we’d got the last buoy. The waves were crashing into us like a minor tsunami. Every two minutes. We were too tired to care. After a pleasant beer with some jolly American young people who were into their ninth year of circumnavigation we went to bed. But sleep does not come to those who bounce and twist and turn and heave. We were up and off at 6am and to hell with Plans.
Some grand if boisterous sailing followed in and out of heavy squalls as we beat North. Just before daybreak the next day, the winds died and it was engine on. Which was fine cos the batteries needed charged. And after a couple of hours the wind was getting up again nicely which is when the engine overheated. That means an alarm goes off. And one becomes alarmed.
That is why we are now back in Rodney Bay in St Lucia, our dinghy is not only repaired but refurbished, our engine seems fine and I’ve had a perfect pedicure. Who needs sandy islands. This is paradise.