30 April Admiral returns to command

I’m back on board after my trip home minus one London house but with a potential purchase of a new place in the country underway.

David has been busy. We may not have a house but we do have two dinghies. How flash is that? He has taken the green cover / chaps from the old boat and fitted them on the new one. The Mercury dinghy must be feeling abandoned...it is looking for a new home at a very reasonable price.

We are also scheduled to haul out in four days’ time to antifoul and regular maintenance.

4 April Moored in Ilet Cochon Baie

 No space in the marina at Bas du Fort we’ve picked up a mooring ball outside in Ilet Cochon Baie for a month. I’m flying home in a few days to complete the sale of our house in Greenwich and to remove the last few remaining items.

Before I leave David and I need to go shopping for a new dinghy. The repair on our current dinghy isn’t holding and we know that Bas du Fort offers a choice of chandlers with dinghies in stock. This would be our 4^th dinghy. The one that is broken now was bought in Mauritius in 2017 when the dinghy we bought second hand from Mystery Ship fell apart. Literally, all the glued seams gave way and we had to buy a replacement. Luckily there was one in stock. We hope to have the same fortune today.

We got lucky! There was a special 20% discount on Highfield boats this week. It would have been rude to pass on this bargain, plus we were able to apply for tax exempt as a foreign vessel.

New Highfield on right

Two dinghy household

31 March Cleared out from Antigua

 We cleared out from Antigua bound south for Guadeloupe tomorrow, filled up with what might be the best price diesel and petrol in the Caribbean at Jolly harbour marina and had dinner with Jack and Jan on Anthem. We got Anthemed! Jan super size gins, wines and a wee nip of Talisker at the end of the evening was probably, no, was, a nip too far.

For me or short trip to Guadeloupe was accompanied by a dull headache. All my own fault.

30 March Repairs

Now back in Jolly Harbour we’ve patched and glued the blown seam on the dinghy. It’s not perfect, new bulges are appearing along the seam, but holding for now.

This evening was a great get together with our buddies Jack & Jan from Anthem. It may have been a while since we last saw them, enough time for them to marry, though the conversation flowed like it had only been a few days.

22 March Bugger!

 We’d had a lovely day anchored in Falmouth Harbour. In the morning we’d left our dinghy on the dock while we went for a walk over Pigeon Hill. The afternoon was relaxing ahead of dinner at Pillars in English Harbour but when we went to step into our dinghy tied at the back of the boat we saw one of the tubes had deflated. Bugger!

A quick check revealed not a cut to the hypalon but a seam under the rubbing strip had parted. I see glueing in our future.

12 March Enough wind to fly a kite

Or more than enough wind for salty sailing. The wind has been blowing hard, steady 20 knots with gusts close to 30 knots since we arrived, and some days it keeps raining! This is not usual weather for this time of the year. We should be basking in 15 knot trades with the occasional shower to wash the dust off the deck, not cowering behind the rain curtains. On the plus side Jolly Harbour anchorage is a large space of uniform depth and very good holding in sand. It’s rare for a boat to drag (if the anchor is set properly with adequate scope). Our is well set, but we still wake up if a strong squall comes through at night.

sheltering from the wind

It’s not all doom and gloom; there are breaks when we can hop in the dinghy and go into the marina / shopping area.

We went one evening to have dinner with our buddy Jody of Thula. A year since we last saw him and Jennifer and there was a lot to catch up. An even longer period to catch up was with Gloria and Michael of Paikea Mist who we last saw in south island NZ in 2012. This was great. From NZ they sailed to SE Asia and then shipped Paikea Mist to Turkey and have been sailing in the Med since then. We took the longer and less direct path to reconnect. No imperative to hurry on the Jackster.

17 February Return to Antigua

Jolly Harbour anchorage

We’ve hung out in Guadeloupe for almost three months, time flew by, but with our 90 day permitted stay coming to an end we sailed north to Antigua.

As it has been before, it was a fine on-the-beam sail between the islands into the anchorage at Jolly Harbour. Check in was easy and then we were free to roam the docks and shops ashore. Familiarity is comfortable; you know where to go, where to tie up the dinghy, take your rubbish and where to find your English Waitrose gin in the supermarket.

The Epicurean grocery is a joy for the British expat community, which is a good size; English marmalade, Marmite, proper British bacon. An army marches on its stomach, a cruiser sails on their store cupboards. Ha ha!

10 February Is this the last one in the Caribbean?

Bas du Fort marina is heavily booked and can only offer us 4 nights’ berth. (Carrying a 35 to 40kg can of paint in a dinghy to a boat on anchor isn’t ideal, better to wheel it in a cart along the dock to load it on board.)

Four days is enough time to rent a car and drive out to the industrial zone in Jarry to buy what could be the last 20L of black Jotun Seaforce 90 in the whole Caribbean, a visit to the hypermarket and exchange our depleted Soda Stream cartridges.

You might be wondering why it is important to buy this particular brand of anti foul when there are other brands available? To apply a different brand over the old one it would have a different chemical structure and there’s no guarantee that it would adhere. You would need to remove every last trace of the existing anti foul base before applying the new. Applying the same-on-same product ensures chemical harmony.

We pick up our rental car and arrive at the paint shop in Jarry. The bright and smiling young assistant speaks as much English as I do French. Basic, enough to get by with, but with Google to translate the finer nuances we are communicating well.

He has six 20L cans of Seaforce 90 in stock, only one is black pigment, and they are all past their advisory use by date by one month. The window between manufacture date and use by date is six months, not a lot when you have to consider the time needed for worldwide shipping and custom clearance.

David sucks in air through his teeth, kicks a metaphorical tyre, shakes the tin and puts on a suitably doubtful facial expression. Do we take it or not? What’s the alternative? Should we risk it? The shop has good AC keeping us, and the stock, cool. David’s happy that the contents sound and feel to be in good order. It’s definitely liquid not a solid mass. Heavy because of the high copper content.

Our delightful smiling assistant taps on his computer for a while and then asks would a 30% discount allay our doubts? More pacing and thinking from David. I wait. David turns and says ‘’yes’’. He feels the paint will be good to use.

We now have what is possibly the last can of black Jotun Seaforce 90 in the whole Caribbean and with a good discount.

8 February Return to Point-a-Pitre for essentials

It’s been a delightful and relaxed month in the Saints but now we need to return to Point-a-Pitre for wants and needs. I want to have a part of my scuba kit serviced; my octopus is free flowing and no matter what we do we can’t fix it so a trip to the equipment doctor is required.

We also need to buy a certain brand of anti foul for haul out later this year. For the last four times we’ve anti fouled we’ve used a Norwegian paint, Jotun Seaforce 90, bought the last couple of times from a supplier in Trinidad. Currently they don’t have any in stock. Don’t know when they will so it is time to think laterally. Jotun is from Norway so perhaps they have agents in Europe, possibly France. Fred Marine in Marina Bas du Fort has successfully imported other items for us from France. Could I find a solution by importing from France?

Mr Google directed me to a French stockist who just happen to have outlets in both Martinique and Guadeloupe! A quick email confirms that the Guadeloupe shop has one 20L pail of black in stock and they will hold it for us. Sometimes luck is on your side.

30 January Scooter day

For the craic of it we hired an electric scooter today to ride every road on Terre Haut and to facilitate, in the meaning of making easier, for the walk up to La Vigie du Chameau. A fort on top of the highest point in the Saints. The translation of La Vigie du Chameau is somewhat baffling, Camel Lookout. Camel’s in the Caribbean? Someone’s name? Does the profile of the hill resemble a camel hump? No. I don’t know. I do know from leaving the scooter at the bottom of the road (road closed to vehicles) it took 45 minutes to reach the top.

A couple of years ago we walked a couple of miles from the dinghy dock in town, climbed the peak to Camel’s Lookout crawled back to our dinghy exhausted. It was a breeze this time!

We drove every road (there’s not many on a small island), visited every beach, stopped for lunch, visited Fort Napoleon, drove second and third times over the same roads, looked at the airport building and the cemetery (on the same road) and it was still only 2.30pm. We returned the scooter at 3pm and dinghied to Jackster to drink water and recover. After so much exercise and effort I needed a rest.

Crawen beach

Pompierre beach

dreaming of riding away from it all

resting at Camel Lookout

can we go home now?