Saturday 13^th &  Sunday 14^th November

Saturday was another day spent getting some jobs done and exploring this wonderful little resort.

The ‘marina’ is tiny and barely worthy of the title, but it is home to quite a few sports fishing boats and the one rather lightweight pontoon houses the locals and has just a handful of visitors moorings which are wholly taken up by a small charter yacht, and large German catamaran and us. In simple terms the pontoon nestles in the corner of a large bay with a protective wall, but we rather stick out of the end which is nice as instead of the usual view of a marina or harbour wall, we can see out to sea and watch everything happening on the beach and around us.  The water is crystal clear (handy for the submarines) and shallow and blue. This then was the perfect place for me to finally resolve the problems we have been having with the noisy spurs rope cutter fitted to our prop shaft. This involved diving and removing the unit in bits and bringing it up on deck where we could replace the polyurethane ‘buffers’ and reassemble it all underwater. After 4 or 5 dives with the snorkel it became obvious that this was a more serious job than we had thought and so we dug out the diving bottles (mini B kit) and set about doing the job properly! This made life much easier and we soon had the replacements ready, but now we had only a few minutes of air left in the tank. (The tank is small and only for emergency use under the boat and we have used it several times already!) There turned out to be just enough air to get it all done and afterwards, Sarah took the tank to the dive shop on the quay and it is now all full and ready for use again (3 euros).

However there are a host of visitor attractions based around us including pens with sea lions, and large wooden pirate ship, jet skis, optimist dinghies, a Wayfarer dinghy and no less than two yellow submarines. The lad who is in charge of the ‘marina’ is also the sailing instructor and the captain of one of the submarines.

Sarah picked up the local area magazine which is all about attracting the attention of all the English visitors to the plethora of bizarre attractions including ‘Titti Trollop’s Music Hall Tavern’ and its not to be missed  ‘Famous Comedy Drag Dinner Show’. There was also an article about the re-enactment of the Battle of Tamasite where 270 years ago the British failed to invade the island. The article was accompanied by a picture of a boat full of Red Coated British soldiers and officers landing with the telling caption ‘lock up your goats!’

On Sunday we went out sailing and spent the first hour or so practising all sorts of different emergency procedures such as ‘man overboard’ drills with different sail configurations in use. This inevitably threw up a number of issues that we had not fully thought through before and together with James (who is also a Yachtmaster Instructor) we worked out some practical solutions to most situations. Nothing is very straightforward though and more thought and practice is going to be needed in due course. The wind died away after lunch and so we took the opportunity to hoist Hyacinth, our cruising chute and had a very enjoyable hour or two experimenting with trimming her set for best speed on various points of sailing.

In the evening we walked round the big bay to a small fish restaurant recommended in the local magazine and had a very nice meal although based heavily on garlic!