15 March 2010 Grand Caymans
The EJ's Voyage
Mike Everton-Jones
Mon 15 Mar 2010 15:49
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Arrived yesterday at about 6PM in the Cayman
Islands! 30 hrs passage starting with North West winds at about 15/18 kts which
then gradually shifted to North West. A bit of a swell in the sea but good
passage. We sailed all the way until about 15.30 hrs and then turned the engine
on to make it before dark. Mike caught a fish again, a big yellow and blue thing
(!) but at the last minute the bugger snapped the fishing line and got away. No
need to say that we weren't impressed! We looked forward to have fish for
dinner... instead we had to satisfy ourselves with tinned sardines!
We are on a mooring ball in the bay in
front of Georgetown still waiting to clear Custom. Two huge cruise liners
arrived this morning and they have priority with the Custom for clearance. So we
haven't been able to go ashore yet.
Beautiful water, hot and sunny.
We hit something hard yesterday in the
bay when trying to locate our mooring ball. Nothing was mentioned on our
charts about it so no idea what we hit. It caused us a fright but we got off it
promptly and hopefully not too much damage done to the keel.
We are both glad that we visited Cuba but going
back there is not on our priority list. It certainly is a very interesting
country but the inefficiency of their system is very frustrating after a while.
It is the land of paperwork. Everybody fills in form about everything and
nothing. One guy from La Guardia even told us that nobody ever reads or process
any of the forms. So what's the point? They have very few computers
and when they do they have no Internet access and no network systems.
People are lovely and even though they are very
poor, they are very well dressed in up-to-date fashion gear. We wondered how
they manage that. They also seem healthy although buying food for us, apart from
in Havana where there are "supermarkets", was often a challenge.
Vegetables are sold from little cart at street corners and what you find is
different from one day to another. We never found meat nor fish, except when at
anchor when we traded with the fishermen lobster tails and fish for T-Shirts,
caps, soaps etc. But we didn't see many fishing boats throughout the whole trip
round the island.
We had a great lunch in a Casa Particular in Nuevo
Gerona. Very tender chicken and pork with salads, rice and beans, sweet
potatoes. The usual but tasty. We missed the last night in town which is a shame
because it was festival day and it would have been great to listen to the music.
But the weather was rough, big swells and lots of wind so we didn't want to
leave the boats alone at anchor. We kept anchor watch for 2 days, sleeping in
the cockpit at night.
Excited about being here and get
food!!!
Blackberry is working again so we can get our
emails from mandcej {CHANGE TO AT} yahoo {DOT} co {DOT} uk again.
Silly how I missed for the last 5 weeks...
Frank is arriving tomorrow afternoon. We still
haven't got delivery of our freezer unit which should have been sent over here
by courier from the UK. So we figure that we will be in the Caymans for 10 days
or so.
When we will be allowed ashore we will look for an
Internet cafe so I can post photos again on the next blog.
Love
Catherine and Mike
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