Mon 24^th, Tuesday 25^th & Wednesday 26^th Jan

It is sort of worrying now how the days seem to slip by with very little happening or being done!

On Monday Sarah got the local sail maker to re-stitch part of the spray hood (the thread is turning to dust after three years of unrelenting sun and UV damage) and also to reinforce parts of the bimini which started to tear during the very early part of the Atlantic crossing. He was very prompt and the work was done by the end of the day, but whilst the spray hood was off, Sarah chose to give it a good wash which meant that for all of Monday we had no protection from the sun which of course was blisteringly hot and did remind us of the importance of these covers. As it happens when we came to put the spray hood back on, we found some more thread that needed replacing as well so that has gone back to the sail maker and left us with no cover over the companion way hatch. This has proved a real nuisance not because of the sun, but because of the rain. Every day we have had these sudden, fairly short but intense downpours, which have us scurrying around closing all the hatches that we have only just remembered to open. But with no cover over the companionway, we have to close the hatch which apart from making it all very stuffy, means I run the very real risk of banging my head on the bloody thing as I nip up the steps! Not a very fast learner it seems.

On Monday we also placed our order for a new dinghy and outboard and heaven knows how that took nearly 2 hours, but nothing is done very quickly out here. We now have to wait for goodness how long for the goods to turn up here. In theory they were due in St Martin (another island) on Tuesday and then might take up to a week to reach here. But all things are relative and given that the timescales out here make the Irish seem prompt, we have no expectation of seeing the new boat for quite some time yet. We plan to head off and return here later.

On Wednesday Sarah and Chris took a local bus into the capital, Castries to visit the market.  The bus system is similar to the dolmus in Turkey: the minibus sets off once it is full, but they run pretty constantly and very fairly efficient although one of our drivers forgot to stop for one passenger but offered to drop her off on his way back – she wasn’t very pleased!  We had sped through town with Vision on Sunday and he had pointed out the market etc and also mentioned just how busy the streets would be.  We crawled into town through a back street shortcut to try and avoid the traffic, and got out at the bus station, which is basically a long street, full of hundreds of minibuses.  We headed for the market bearing umbrellas, lots of heavy downpours.   The market was a bit of a disappointment;  it is very large and spread over three buildings but the majority of it is crammed full of tiny souvenir stalls all selling more or less the same stock of jazzy shirts, tie-dye dresses, basketwork, carved statues etc.   We wondered how on earth they all manage to make a living, although there were three cruise liners in the harbour with their passengers aimless wandering around.  I managed to buy some vegetables from the table stalls outside the market from a very friendly and informative seller, who explained a lot of the exotic vegetables we haven’t come across before.   We then found the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception which was the size of a large church, very brightly decorated inside with interesting depictions of both white and black Jesuses  After that we had a bit of a look round but fighting through the enthusiastic taxi drivers all trying to sell trips to the sea of humanity off the ships, the constant rain and not particularly inspiring shops, we admitted defeat and returned on the minibus.

Then late on Wednesday afternoon we received a knock on the hull and popped up to find two Swedish couples standing on the dock. They had just arrived in their Najad 460 and were moored one boat away from us. They were particularly excited as they had a whole host of questions to ask us as they had seen Serafina before, whilst she was moored up in Puerto Calero (Lanzarote) whilst we were back in the UK for a month. They had been hugely impressed with the gantry we had built in Turkey and apparently they have hundreds of photos of Serafina taken from every angle and now had the opportunity to quiz us about it all. Their Najad 460 is called Ellen and of course it did not take us long to find out that we both know a number of other Najad owners so the scene is set for Thursday when we plan to get to inspect each other’s boats.....

Actually it was especially nice to have another smart Najad sitting near us on the dock as we have been suffering a bit of Oysteritis. It really does seem that there are more Oysters (a brand of yacht) here than in Fox’s marina on the River Orwell which is where they mostly hail from. It would appear that a whole host of them come across with the ARC and then get moored up here and left empty.