A Jolly good tidy up.

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sat 11 Feb 2012 01:54

Thursday & Friday – 9th & 10th Feb

Rob and I caught the bus fairly early and arrived at the market in St John’s (the capital of Antigua) which was right opposite the bus stop at 0900hrs.   Although only about a third of the stalls were occupied we were engaged in chat by a very able saleswoman who helped us choose fruit and veg that should ripen at all the right times next week.   We then visited another stall where Rob had a lot of banter with a wonderful guy who was very interested in our lifestyle.   We had finished our shopping within half an hour and had had a thoroughly enjoyable experience – sadly the same cannot be said for the large supermarket at the marina.   In fact Sue from Halsway Grace has made it her absolute goal to get suitable responses out of all the staff!

We then discovered that when we had been told to catch the no 20 bus, that is what we should do.   Not be inveigled on to a no 22 with a promise that he is going to the marina, when in fact he has no intention of going there….

The rest of the day, Thursday, and also Friday has been spent re-organising the boat so that we can shoe-horn in our guests.   It is at this point we always get over-ambitious: “well, we’ll remember we’ve put this here”….   Technically Rob is supposed to record any changes in location on our bible of a storage list, but since he doesn’t suffer from my OCD tendencies, this is why we are still searching for a rather clever LED anchor light we purchased winter 2009 and have buried somewhere!   Admittedly having guests is great for forcing us to have a very good tidy up of all those things that float from lodging to lodging without any purpose.

Rob managed to get our gas bottle filled.   If you wander around the marina, just about everyone will stop you and tell you that Danny will fill it for you.   There is just the small matter of tracking down the mythical Danny who is actually the travel-hoist driver and appears to do the gas as his side-line.    But it was all achieved and at the times promised.

We like the marina , but get the impression that the actual boatyard promises much but doesn’t deliver so we would not contemplate laying-up here.   We have heard a lot anecdotal tales about boats being broken into, but have now also met several actual unfortunates.   Nor does it seem that promised work gets done until you arrive and start jumping up and down.

Had our very final drink (probably) with Halsway Grace as they are off to Barbuda and then heading south to lay up for the summer in Grenada.   At the last minute we decided to try and get a table at the Italian restaurant here, but despite there being empty tables they apparently would not be able to service them.   So we went to what we felt was the less salubrious Crow’s Nest and had a very nice meal, with great staff.

This afternoon I cooked up a chilli for next week and Rob went off to ask the Crow’s Nest if they would be prepared to freeze it down for me.   When it was ready he took it round to them where the original staff member was absent but one of the directors very happily made the arrangements.   Now you can’t fault that service with a smile and worryingly they were French!

Pips, Tim and, my god-daughter, Laura Curtis arrive tomorrow for a week.   They haven’t been sailing before apart from a brief day on our old boat in the Solent 6 years ago so it will be interesting to see what they make of it.   We are hoping to persuade a guest blogger to take over for a few days, so watch this space!