Now on Mustique
Ocean Science's blog
Glenn Cooper
Tue 27 Feb 2018 22:40
“12:52.00N 61:15.00W”
A bit late in kicking off this blog, chums, for reasons which will appear
below. I am writing this as we are moored up in Britannia Bay, Mustique,
an island in the state of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Mustique is a
rather unusual unusual place. We all feel jammy.
Before we left Antigua we had a couple of days doing this and that,
sauntering over to L’Epicure supermarket, but not having to shlep back
because one of the nice lads there pushes the shopping back to the boat in a
trolley for a modest contribution.
But the boat itself was like a workshop for a couple of days; the floor was
up with David and his apprentice fixing a large number of apparently
unrelated problems, such as generator and the main engine, with other
issues such as the water maker which ceased to function (the awesome David
has now we learn, manufactured a replacement for the faulty part which can
be installed when we are back in Antigua). And our old friend, the naughty
water jet tender, needed yet more attention from Greg the engineer – he now
regards this piece of kit as his pension.
All this made our departure date doubtful. But amazingly we were ready to
go by our planned time which was Saturday evening. First we watched the
England game at Murrayfield from the congenial surroundings of The Crow’s
Nest bar . There seemed to be equal numbers of Scotland and England fans in
the place. Your blosgster is of course a Scotland supporter, and a win
against the Auld Enemy was a rare occasion.
Back to the boat, and over to the fuelling dock to get some diesel. As we
were fuelling up we were told that we could not check out of Jolly Harbour
marina that day because the immigration staff had all gone home at 1 o’clock.
The reason was that a water outage had meant that the ladies’ loo was not
usable. This was pretty pathetic – the three of us are all self-employed
types, and the notion that an unusable bog is a reason for bunking off is
pure fantasy. Working for a government must be different from earning a
living. But we were told that the office in Nelson’s harbour on the other
side of the island was open normally, so we raced over there in a taxi.
Despite the taxi driver’s excellent impersonation of Lewis Hamilton on
steroids, we missed it by 5 minutes. So back to Jolly, where we needed a
final emergency call out to the legendary David to fix something crucial ,
and the ceremonial pouring of a monster whisky for the skipper. We had no
ice so I asked a crewman on the monster sailing boat next door if they had
any. He disappeared below then came up and said no “It was not that sort of
boat”. In other words, they didn’t do cocktails – just Red Bull and
Megaprotein swill to sustain the 18 crew. So I went to the restaurant up
the road and got some ice , and booked a table for later in the evening. So
we had a nice meal on shore, instead of the sandwiches I had made for the
trip.
The next morning we learnt the joyful news that the ladies toilet in the
immigration office would now flush. We checked out - Mr Cooper’s regular
grapple with burocracy, although the various officials we deal with in this
part of the world are largely charming people.
And so down to Mustique, due south and about 33 hours. A nice wind just
ahead of the beam, so we had a few hours sailing, then it dropped and we had
to use the engine as well. A bit choppy to start with and your blogster
felt a bit green, so lay down for a while. The snooze escalated to the
extent that the other two started to get worried about me getting bedsores.
Readers may recall that our drug of choice for seasickness is scopalamine ,
which suppresses the gagging reflex (the reason the Americans use it for
waterboarding at Guantanamo), but it has a side-effect of drowsiness.
Anyway I slept long enough to give the rest of the crew a good laugh, but no
puko.
The reason for hurrying was that Monday was Glennbo’s birthday and his pals
on Mustique had invited us to dinner. We got there in time, were met by
our charming hosts at the dinghy dock and driven to the house for an
excellent and highly congenial meal. And were there again for lunch today
and a swim in the infinity pool. I have been so rushed off my feet with all
this I have had no time to write this blog until Tuesday evening, and we are
shortly off to the Cotton Club for a cocktail party, and then dinner again.
Tomorrow we plan to sail with Glenn’s friends to the neighbouring Island of
Bequia. It is all grind, is it not? More news will follow, with, I hope
some pictures when I get to sit at the chart table. We hear the news from
England about the weather; sorry about that, folks.
Pip pip, mine’s a Dark and Stormy