Christmas & New Year
Trippwire
Sun 17 Jan 2010 19:21
For all those who
are regular blog readers, please accept my apology for such tardiness. We have
been accused of getting into Caribbean time....which may be a little too close
to the truth!
So, when we last
updated you, Dom and Caroline had left us and we were on our tod for the first
time in 2 months. The exciting thing about all this is that we could take
everything out of their lockers and leave them on the floor. Oh, and ignore the
washing up for a few days....amazing, having had to be very tidy for the last 2
months, you would have thought that something may have rubbed off on the
tidiness front...not a bit of it, and within seconds the boat looked like a bomb
had hit it!
We spent a couple of
days stocking up in Bequia, and waited for our friend Dimitris, who we had met
in Gran Canaria and who has become a good friend. He was coming down from St
Lucia with his family. After catching up with him, we agreed to meet in
Tobago Keys for Christmas and we headed off for a 20 mile sail down
there.
On Christmas eve we
purchased a couple of red snapper off the local fishermen, and headed over to
Dimitris' rather more comfortable boat, for a barbecue. Aside from the company
and the fish, the most exciting part of the night was eating on a boat with a
table. If anyone wants to ask us around to supper when we return, you may find
us rather less civilised than when we left!
Christmas day was
without doubt rather more different for us than all of you in the UK.....for
starters, it was too hot to even put on a tee shirt, and for seconds, we had a
rather more impressive Christmas tree than any of you back home. As you can see,
it consisted of a branch of driftwood picked up from the local beach, decorated
with some tinsel that was bought in the Canaries, all held up by, a
resplendent loo roll!
After a swim and
some snorkeling, we up hooked and headed around to Salt Whistle bay, which is
the same bay that we went to with Dom and Caroline:
Christmas dinner
consisted of lots of rum punch followed by a full on 5 course meal at the only
restaurant on the beach. This is attached to a very exclusive resort, which
amazingly was totally empty for Christmas. In fact, we were the only people at
the whole restaurant! The food was fantastic, culminating in 1/2 a lobster
each...as you can see by the impressively cheesy photo
below!!
The plan following
Christmas was to start to head north, and so back to Bequia, then up to Marigot
Bay in St Lucia, which is a very pretty little bay. I got myself rather severely
into the dog house by dropping the dinghy keys in the drink just as I was
unlocking it to head home...me thinks that a little rum punch may have been to
blame. Baaaadddd Miles! In fact, we were clearly such good rum punch
customers that they offered to drop us back to our boat in their launch!
The next morning
consisted of a swim over to the boat next door and after a bit of pleading they
lent me their dinghy. Luckily the keys were directly below the dinghy
jetty!
On the 28th, we
headed over to Rodney bay where we anchored up in the bay. Rather than having a
relaxed day as planned, we made a discovery. The boat had started to get a bit
of an eau de sulphur smell, that had been getting progressively stronger over
the last few days. I suspected that it may have been coming from the watermaker
that was not working, and so after a bit of digging, we decided that it was not
that. We took all the floorboards up,but nothing. Finally we looked into the
locker that had the water tanks in...and euuuuggggghhhh, the smell was terrible
and had me gagging straight away. We suspect that it may have been water from
the shower tray and that we had gone off sailing without having drained it, with
the result that the water had flowed back into the water tank locker and over
the course of time had become rather toxic! Anyway, lots of very strong bleach
later and it seems to be sorted, and has not returned!
Seeing as it was my
birthday, Jennifer took me out to a lovely restaurant on the beach, which was a
very cool end to the day.
It was about this
time that we started to conck. Whilst we had done lots of sleeping post
Atlantic, we were still on the go whilst Dom and Caroline were out, and as we
came off the busy timetable of the last few months, we both suddenly felt very
tired. So, we headed up to Marin in Martinique, checked ourselves into the
marina and slept - lots! The advantage was that we were also able to get some
stuff mended (the stack pack was looking rather ragged), and have a big sort out
and tidy up.
We ended up spending
nearly 5 days in Marin, including New Year. Given that it is a major yachting
capital, we had hoped for a large party, and so started out having beers on the
boat with just us (see the photo below of the New Years eve sunset). Either
there was a party and no one was telling us (have we become feral already?!),
or, as I persuaded myself, there just was not a party. So after a pizza, in the
main yachty hang out, where there were very few yachties, we headed to bed and
were sound asleep well before midnight!
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