Feb 1

Today is Superbowl Sunday.  We have been discussing where to watch the game for the past week with all our friends.  Those of us at the dock have cable TV, so we have the option of just staying home.  Those at anchor need a venue or a friend.  Part of the problem in making a choice is that the game doesn't start until 19:35 local time.  We all are considering the logistics of coming home at nearly midnight when it will be over.  That makes just staying at home sound good.  Scuttlebutts is a good option for those of us in the marina, since it's a short walk from the docks.  But, they only have one TV that isn't any bigger than what most of us have on our boats, and their reception sucks.  Not to mention their service.  There is another bar on the beach that sounds promising, but again, we would have to come home afterwards.  We were leaning towards just staying aboard when a plan came together.

Barb made chili in the morning, figuring that would work no matter our decision.  It would keep if we went out, it could be our dinner if we stayed aboard, or it could go to a collaborative effort.  The collaborate effort turned out to be what happened.  About two hours before kickoff, a plan was hatched.  Lightheart has a flat screen TV that is semi-portable.  That is to say, it can be brought up on deck.  With contributions from Lightheart, Liquid Courage, Seabbatical, and MoonSail, dinner was consumed aboard Lightheart.  After we ate, Dave brought the TV up on deck and we sat on chairs on the dock, and on the side of Liquid Courage which is in the next slip.  We had a few other folks join us on the dock for the game and had a great time.  I had been concerned if the local cable company would substitute commercials, or if we would see all the US commercials from the Florida station we were watching.  Not to worry - we got all the commercials, and there were some good ones.  As it turned out, the game was good too, and we all stayed to the very end.  I would have liked to see Arizona win, since I have ties there, but it was good regardless.

GPS N 14-04.520 W 060-56.960  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9719.

Feb 2

Happy Ground Hog Day and Happy Birthday to Barb's brother Jim.

The morning was spent watching TV and surfing the net.  We had two visits from friends we met while in Grenada.  Larry & Betty from Wimbrel were going by in their dinghy and saw us and stopped to say hi.  Later in the morning, Jeff & Jo from Sutton Hoo came by and visited for about an hour.  It's cool to see folks we met while running the marina out here as cruisers.  We also saw Tony & Janice from Nashuma go by, but didn't get to chat with them.

I did do a little bit of boat work.  I reinstalled the alternator that I took off a week ago.  I decided that since there is no clear cut place to get it rebuilt, I'll just put it back and see if it lasts until we get to Antigua.  I installed a new wire from the alternator to the terminal strip for the tach rather than mess with the wire that fried in the original harness.  Once done, Barb fired her up, and the alternator was charging and the tach worked.  We shut the engine off, and then it occurred to me to see if the tach worked at higher rpm's.  Barb started the engine again, and the tach didn't work at all.  We may just live without it until Antigua too.  The other task completed was filling the water tanks.  Ok, that's not a repair, but it counts as a boat project.

Barb took our laundry up to the service that is based in the marina.  While they had it back in the afternoon, they were considerably more expensive than the service we used a couple weeks ago.  We had homemade pizza aboard for dinner.  It occurred to me late this evening that I haven't been off the boat all day.  I guess even in the marina there are stay-on-the-boat days.

GPS N 14-04.520 W 060-56.960  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9719.

Feb 3

We spent a lazy morning watching TV.  At lunchtime, we dinghied over to the mall.  We need some groceries, and there is food there.  We walked upstairs in the mall first this time.  The shops look to be about the same as when we were here two years ago.  We stopped in the bookstore and bought a couple of books.  One was a Randy Wayne White one that we haven't read.  The other was the autobiography of James Mitchell, the former Prime Minister of St. Vincent and The Grenadines.  It caught my eye because we met him in Bequia.  He owns the Frangipani where we went almost everyday for drinks and internet, and he was usually hanging around saying hi to guests.  Our choices for lunch were the food court in the mall, or KFC, or Burger King just outside.  We walked through the food court and saw that all four choices were pretty much the same local food.  I had a hankering for American fast food, so the decision was between KFC and Burger King.  We chose KFC.  We should have chosen Burger King.  We both ordered meal deals, meaning we got chicken, fries, a biscuit, and a soft drink.  Barb got a two-piece meal and I got the three-piece.  The girl asked what kind of soda we wanted.  Barb asked what the choices were, and the answer was Coke.  Why did she ask us, when there was no choice?  The fries came with one packet of ketchup, no more.  The biscuit came with a little package of butter, but they had no utensils of any kind to spread it.  And you got one flimsy napkin.  We have always felt safe with KFC anywhere in the world, because they are pretty consistent.  Not this one.  The taste was good and like it should be, but their cuts of chicken were the way they cut them up locally, not like in the States.  I had three pieces, and I can't tell you what parts they were.  They also were greasier and not as well cooked as usual.  I suspect the oil wasn't up to temperature when they fired it.  We are watching US TV the past few weeks, and we regularly see a KFC commercial boasting that there is a real chef in every store.  Not here.

While in the KFC, I fell for a panhandler's line hook line and sinker.  The guy approached us and asked what hotel we were staying in.  I said we were in the marina.  Then he said he recognized me because he was a night time security guard there.  I should have figured out by this point that he was full of crap, since at first he thought we were in a hotel, then in the next breath he says he's seen us.  Especially when we are rarely out late at night.  Next he launched into this story about a kids cricket program that he was involved in.  He has an old beat up cricket ball with him that he put in my hand so I could see how old it was.  He said he was looking for donations to buy a couple new balls for the kids.  He said the balls cost $18.17 each.  I whipped out my money and gave him a $20 and said I could handle one, not two.  He said thanks and left.  He wasn't out the door before I realized I'd been had.  I don't know why I let him get as far as he did without just telling him to leave, but his story was original.  As we were eating we saw him approach four other tourists in the parking lot.  They had the sense to say no.

After lunch we hit the grocery store. We didn't need a lot of stuff, but this may be our last chance for a few weeks to shop in English.  We will be going from here to Martinique where the products and their labels are French.

In the evening, we joined a bunch of other cruisers at Jambe de Bois, which is a bar and restaurant at Pigeon Island.  Pigeon Island is the northern point of the bay.  Mike & Lynn from Seabbatical rode in our dinghy with us.  It took about fifteen minutes to get over there, since it is a fair distance, and with four in the dinghy we can't get up on a plane.  Jambe de Bois is inside the national park which contains Pigeon Island and the old fort on top of the hill.  The park closes at 17:00, so we all went about 17:30 to avoid having to pay the $5 park entrance fee.  There we eighteen of us total, and we sat at two big tables.  The menu had a few different things than we usually find in the islands.  Barb went light and had a bowl of Callaloo soup and some fried calamari.  I had a seafood lasagna that was quite good.  Their rum punch was good too.  They had a couple of cats hanging around, but they didn't beg at all.  One of them, a little mostly white one, curled up along side our chairs and stayed there through the whole meal.  When we were ready to leave we had to pick her up and move him to avoid stepping on her.  It was quite dark when we made the trip back to the marina.  We took it nice and easy to avoid running into any anchored boats, and were the last ones back in the marina.  We noticed that there are probably three times as many boats anchored out now as when we first got here two weeks ago.

GPS N 14-04.520 W 060-56.960  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9719.

Feb 4

Today was an important milestone in our journey.  Over lunch at Cafe Ole, we picked a date for our haulout and return to the States.  Our timing is loosely based on hurricane season, which officially starts July 1.  We figured traveling right around the July 4th weekend would not be a good idea, so given that we have no other firm plans yet as far as employment, we picked June 15 as our haulout date.  We still have to confirm that with the boat yard, but that's what we'll ask for.  I know now how our friends Brian & Tammy felt back in 2003 when I made the arrangements to join them in the Bahamas and sail back to Florida with them.  Since my joining them was based around me taking time off work, I picked the date which effectively ended their cruise.  So, even though this has been our plan for a while now, putting a date on it makes it real.  I have started looking at where you can fly from Antigua.  Travel websites are not geared towards people who don't have firm dates and don't know where they want to go.  Just try to pick a city and determine what airlines fly there and where they go, without you having specific dates or destinations in mind.  We found that we can fly to New York, Atlanta, Miami, or Charlotte from Antigua, and then connect of course to anywhere.  Since we don't have any employment plans yet, we are leaning towards flying to New York, where my brother and my daughter are, since it's the cheapest option.  From there we can figure out where we are going, perhaps buy a car, figure out what we're doing with the cat, etc.

After all that mental work, I spent the afternoon reading a new book.  It's called Beyond The Islands by James Mitchell, former Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.  I bought it the other day in St. Lucia.  This won't be a two-day read, as it is a large paperback, with closely spaced lines and 450 pages.

GPS N 14-04.520 W 060-56.960  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9719.

Feb 5

Barb took advantage of being at the dock with unlimited power, and vacuumed the whole boat.  She picked up enough cat hair to make a couple of extra kittens.  She even vacuumed the cat as he lay on the couch.  For as skittish as he is sometimes, the sound of the vacuum doesn't bother him, and he actually seems to enjoy the stroking and sucking of the hose.

Early in the afternoon, Barb noticed a crowd gathered on the side of the road way over at the corner of the marina property.  She got the binoculars out and was trying to figure out what was going on, when somebody else on the dock told her that a car had gone in the water.  Not having seen a good car accident in a long time, several of us walked around to the end of the last dock in the marina, where we would have ringside seats to the attempts by a tow truck to pull the Isuzu Rodeo out of the water.  Apparently the driver had been driving by around 02:00 last night when he fell asleep, went off the side of the road, and into the water.  Given his momentum and the fact that the car floated a little bit, it ended up about thirty or forty feet from shore.  The goofballs who were trying to pull it out obviously didn't understand the physics of the situation, because the first thing they did to pull it out was simply wrap a chain around the spare tire on the tailgate.  This worked for dragging the car back to the shore, but as soon as they tried to lift it up, the spare tire, with the tailgate still attached, came off the car and it sunk to the bottom again.  The guys in the water were all yelling at each other and diving down in the murky water to attach the chain somewhere else.  On the second attempt, they ripped off another hunk of bodywork and down she went again.  There were a couple more attempts that resulted in the chain just popping off whatever they hooked it to.  Finally, they put the chain through one wheel, and remarkably it stayed on as they pulled the car up over the seawall, almost taking out a signal light pole in the process.  For a funny video made by Don from Liquid Courage of the event, click here.

Late in the afternoon, we hauled the dinghy.  We don't plan to leave for a couple more days, but we also don't plan to use the dinghy to go anywhere, so I figured we'd get it out of the water and clean it off some.  Lightheart and Seabbatical have both pulled theirs up on the dock and given them thorough cleanings because quite a bit of crap had grown on them.  I'm not going to that extent, but need to get the chunky stuff off it.  When we raised the motor to it's mount, we found quite a bit of stuff on the lower end.  We then raised the dinghy itself, and it wasn't as bad as I had feared.  Since we are backed into the slip, I was able to stand on the dock and reach to the middle with my large stainless scraper, and then repeat the process on the other side from the swim platform of the boat.  The stuff came off with no effort at all, so I was happy.

The marina passed out fliers today announcing a customer appreciation happy hour this afternoon.  While we have been here, they have been constructing a new deck on the water's edge near the marina office.  That is where the happy hour will be.  Throughout the afternoon we watched them setup a tent to be the bar, and another for a band.  At 17:30, the band started and they started pouring beer and rum punch.  All free, for two hours.  We'll have to factor this in to the expense of staying in a marina.  Every little bit helps.  After happy hour ended, a group of us went to Key Largo Pizza for the last time. 

GPS N 14-04.520 W 060-56.960  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9719.

Feb 6

We have actually had several days with no significant rain, which is a good thing on one hand, but the downside is that now the boat is quite dirty.  There is a lot of construction going on in the boatyard, which is adjacent to the marina, resulting in a lot of dust settling on the boat.  Most boat owners wash their boats every time they use them, and then several more times just for the hell of it.  I subscribe to the theory that why wash it when you're just going to take it out and get it all salty again?  But, it was looking kind of grubby with the dust and then the subsequent dirty footprints when it did get damp, so out came the brush, bucket and hose.  I washed the deck off pretty good, and Barb moved all the stuff in the cockpit and washed that out.  I must admit it looked much better when it was done.

A few of us went up to Scuttlebutt's for lunch.  This will be our last time for this too.  After our initial poor service at Scuttlebutt's, we have not given them as much business as we would have, but they do seem to have come around a little bit since some complaints were lodged.  It will be interesting to see what else changes here as the rest of the marina redevelopment progresses.

We plan to leave tomorrow, so we checked out with Customs this afternoon.  St. Lucia's Customs rules are quite civilized, and they let you check out as much as seventy-two hours before you actually leave.  Some places, notably Trinidad give you two hours to be out of Dodge once you have checked out, and they actually do enforcement.  The checkout process was no big deal.  I had learned about a new online program called eSeaClear that allows you to enter all your data and then print the forms instead of having to manually fill them out each time.  Several Caribbean countries are participating in this program and St. Lucia is one of them.  Unfortunately, when I got to the office, the guy told me that since I had cleared in manually, I had to clear out manually.  Oh well, next time.

Mike & Lynn joined us to check out a new happy hour alternative.  There is a structure in the vacant lot next to the parking lot that resembles a boat, but it really a bar.  It is painted up as a large Digicell advertisement.  I'm guessing it was put here when the ARC boats arrived and has just stayed.  On Fridays, they open it up for happy hour and have a barbeque cooking chicken and fish.  We went over and had a few beers there about 17:00.  It was nothing special, but the beers were cold and a buck cheaper than at the regular bar.  After a few beers, we went over to Cafe Ole and had paninis for a light dinner.  Since we are leaving in the morning, we made it an early evening and did not watch TV until midnight as we have gotten in the habit of doing.

GPS N 14-04.520 W 060-56.960  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9719.

Feb 7

I was up about 06:30 and tried to listen to the weather on the SSB.  In the marina, there is so much electrical interference, that hearing on the SSB has been tough.  I couldn't hear Chris Parker at all, but Seabbatical could, and he confirmed that the forecast still looked good for us to move to Martinique today.  At 08:00, I was supposed to host the Coconut Telegraph net.  The noise on that frequency was worse than ever, and I couldn't hear a thing.  I managed to communicate just enough to get one of the other volunteer net controllers to take over for me.

Once all the radio stuff was done, I went up to the marina office to check out and pay our bill.  The water and electricity here are metered for each boat, so I took our meter readings to save the time of one of the dock hands coming down to read it.  Our electric meter had said zero when we checked it, which wasn't out of the question since the marina has just been rebuilt.  Perhaps nobody was in this slip and used electricity yet.  Well, the meter still said zero after we had been plugged in for three weeks.  I explained this to the girl in the office, and suggested that she charge us about the same as what she charged Seabbatical who had checked out right before us.  She agreed to that, so the problem was solved without a hassle.

Once checked out, we left the dock.  We pulled away about 08:45 and headed over to the fuel dock.  We got tied up there without any help, since the dock attendant wasn't paying attention and didn't see us approaching, even though I had called him on the radio before leaving our slip.  The fuel dock edge is a little rough, and one of our fenders caught on it and instead of sliding along as we came to a stop, it jammed and pulled hard enough to break the plastic clip that holds it on the lifeline.  This has happened before, and we carry spare clips, but it also bent one of the lifeline stanchions again.  This stanchion had been bent before and I straightened it in Grenada.  No big deal.  When the attendant came out, he apologized for not being there to take our lines, and asked how we would be paying.  I told him that I would like to use my credit card.  He explained that was ok, but I would have to go to the office first so they could pre-approve the card.  However if I could show him that I had enough cash to pay in case my card wouldn't approve, then I could save the extra trip to the office.  I showed him that I had almost a thousand EC dollars on me, and he turned on the pump.  We filled our tank and all five jerry jugs with fuel, and got gas for the dinghy.  I went up to the office and paid the girl with my credit card.  We were off the fuel dock at 09:20, and Seabbatical was just leaving their slip in the marina at the same time.  Lightheart and Liquid Courage were going to leave about an hour later.

Once we cleared the jetties that come into the marina area, we unfurled our mainsail about 75% of the way.  I have learned to not trust the weather forecast until I am out in the open between the islands, and it's easier to let the rest of the sail out, than it is to roll some back in.  So, the plan is to just motorsail with the reefed main until we get around the corner, out of Rodney Bay and clear of the north tip of St. Lucia.  I was glad I did this, because once we were clear of the island, we found the wind and seas to be more than forecast.  The wind forecast had been for about fifteen knots.  We found twenty to twenty-three once we were out there.  The wind direction was a little bit more north of the forecast, meaning we would be right on the edge of how close to the wind we can sail and stay on course.  The sea conditions were also more than forecast.  Fortunately, most of the big sea was swell as opposed to a chop, so we usually just rode up and over the big waves.  It wasn't great, but we've been in lots worse.  We have a joke about sea conditions.  One of our friends in a catamaran once said the seas were benign.  Those of us near them in monohulls thought the seas were pretty ugly.  (Cats and monohulls ride very different.)  So today we said the seas were benign - yep, be nine to ten feet.  In reality, there were waves every few minutes that were larger than that.  The largest were probably fifteen feet, but fortunately, they were the nice gentle roller kind, and we would just ride up and over with little discomfort.  It was still unnerving to see them coming, blocking out our view of all the other boats and the horizon.

The distance between St. Lucia and Martinique is a little over twenty miles.  You can see both islands the whole trip, as long as one of those big waves wasn't in your face.  Seabbatical and MoonSail both decided to motorsail the straight line between Rodney Bay and St. Anne, Martinique, rather than take a longer tack and probably be able to sail most of it.  Seabbatical was going a bit faster than us, and by halfway across, they were about a mile ahead of us.  Mike called on the VHF to tell us that they had just seen a large whale on the surface.  We got our camera ready and kept a sharp lookout for the next half hour, but never saw it.

Seabbatical got into the anchorage at St. Anne and dropped the hook near the back of the pack.  We were still almost two miles out, when Lightheart called Seabbatical on the radio and said they were just entering the anchorage.  How could that be?  They left at least forty-five minutes after us, and I didn't see them pass us.  But, sure enough, we could see them with our binoculars coming from quite a ways west of our course.  They had proved to me once again, that while the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, it isn't necessarily the fastest when your talking sailing.  Now granted, Lightheart is a bigger boat than MoonSail, and it's designed to race, but they had gone way west of us, sailing all the way with no motor assist, then tacked back into the wind and motored back east to the anchorage.  While I have always understood these sailing concepts, I still have trouble going to point C when my goal is to get from point A to B.  I should have been a motor boater.

Our guide book says that the Customs office in Le Marin, which is just around the corner from us, is only open in the mornings, seven days a week, so we will just fly our yellow Q flag until tomorrow.

We were all anchored by mid-afternoon, and we were invited over to Lightheart for sundowners.  While there, we all got to see a green flash.  The green flash is a phenomenon where just as the last bit of the sun disappears into the ocean, it appears green for a second.  It only happens when there is a cloudless horizon, and even then you don't always appreciate it.  While many people will say it is a myth, we have seen three now, and have also read a scientific explanation of how it is possible given the refraction of the light through the atmosphere.

Later in the evening, after we were back on MoonSail, we heard an interesting conversation on the radio.  Miss Lori Ann is a large ocean going fishing vessel.  It is probably a little over a hundred feet long.  We first saw it in Bequia, where the obviously American captain was talking very American Spanish to a couple of the old fishing boats that have been converted to haul fuel from Venezuela.  At that time, the captain seemed to be a reasonable guy, because he was trying to explain to the Venezuelans that jabbering on channel sixteen all the time was not proper.  Sea Cloud is one of the sailing cruise ships that we see frequently.  She is a few hundred feet long and probably carries a hundred passengers or so.  Tonight's conversation went something like this:  The captain of Miss Lori Ann started talking on channel 16, without identifying himself, trying to hail "the big charter cruise thing off my starboard bow".  He didn't use his name, or the name of the cruise ship, which he should have been able to identify just because he's around these waters all the time.  There was no answer from Sea Cloud, so he hailed again, this time referring to Sea Cloud as "the idiot crossing my path and stopping in front of me".  At this point Sea Cloud's very professional sounding captain answered and asked what he wanted.  Miss Lori Ann finally identified himself as the fishing boat coming down the coast and wanted to know why Sea Cloud made him change course as they came from offshore.  He went on to say that obviously Sea Cloud operated by the big boat rules and not the official rules of the road, and that the captain must have gotten his license at Wal-Mart.  At that point, the captain of Sea Cloud calmly said that he didn't think he had done anything wrong and that the captain of Miss Lori Ann wasn't acting very professional.  The whole exchange sounded like the kind of thing you might hear on a Saturday afternoon on Galveston Bay when a powerboat cuts off a sailboat under sail and there's been a lot of alcohol and testosterone involved.  You don't expect to hear a professional captain talk like that no matter what.  To make the whole thing funnier, for those of you who know the rules of the road, Sea Cloud clearly had the right of way.  So the guy being the jerk was wrong.

GPS N 14-26.099 W 060-53.247  Nautical miles traveled today 22.  Total miles 9741.

Feb 8

Happy Birthday to Barb's Dad.

I hosted the Coconut Telegraph again this morning, and it was good to be able to hear again.  Being away from the marina, I had virtually no background noise or static, and I clearly heard everybody checking in, all the way from Puerto Rico to Venezuela.  Once we were done with the net, we all loaded up in our dinghies and headed to Le Marin to check in.  From where we are anchored off of St. Anne, it is about two and a half miles to the marina in Le Marin where the Customs office is.  It is up an inlet into a protected bay though, so it's not a bad dinghy ride, just long.  When we got to the Customs office, we found several people standing outside.  The sign on the door said (in French) that the hours were 07:00 to 12:30, seven days a week.  But there was nobody there and it was after 09:00.  The only civilized thing to do was go to Mango Bay, the waterfront restaurant next door, and have coffee and croissants.  There were ten of us together, including Seabbatical, Lightheart, Liquid Courage, and Tom and Alwin from Quay Three.  Alwin is from the UK, and could manage a bit of French, so she ordered for us.  The waitress spoke a little English, and between the two we got most of our order straight.  When the coffees, juices, and croissants came, we figured out what was missing and ordered again.  It was frustrating to some of the group, but typical for a French island. 

The French islands (Martinique and Guadeloupe) are quite different from the rest of the Caribbean.  For one thing, they are not countries unto themselves.  They are Departments of France, which would be like a state in the US.  They are fully supported by France financially, meaning that they have generally better infrastructure.  The roads are good, there are no junk cars laying around, the streets are clean, and the buildings are in a generally better state of repair.  Everybody speaks French, and unless you are dealing with someone who's job includes dealing with tourists, they may not speak English.  It is very much like being in a small town in France in a lot of ways.  Over the past three weeks, we have been hearing reports from other cruisers that there has been a general strike in Guadeloupe, the other French island north of here.  The issue is the practice of bringing primarily white people from France to fill higher paying jobs here instead of employing the local primarily black people.  Other Caribbean islands have strict rules where an employer has to prove that there is nobody local who can do a job, before they can get a work permit for a foreigner.  Since Martinique and Guadeloupe are part of France, the same concept does not apply.  The French are known for having one or two day strikes to make some point.  Since they usually announce them in advance and everybody knows they are only a day or two, they are usually just an inconvenience.  This strike in Guadeloupe though has gone on for three weeks now.  Exactly who is on strike seems to be a nebulous thing.  Many stores have been closed, for some time the taxis and busses were not running.  The electricity was off over much of the island for a while, and fuel and other basic services were not available.  Last week we heard that things were getting back to normal, but today we heard it is not over altogether.  Our fear is that the strike will spread to Martinique while we are here.  In fact, when we went back to the Customs office, somebody had put a sign on the inside of the glass door that said they were closed today because of the strike and to come back tomorrow.  The good news about that is that the French islands have always been notoriously lax about Customs procedures, and they don't care if you have been here a couple of days before you get around to checking in.

After giving up on checking in, we walked around the waterfront a bit.  We found several shops and restaurants open, and a few closed.  Being Sunday morning, it's hard to tell if any of the closed things are relative to the strike or just because it's Sunday.  By about 11:00, we headed back to our boats, and then most of us met at the dinghy dock in St. Anne.  St. Anne is a smaller town than Le Marin.  The first order of business was to find an ATM and get Euros.  Being French, Martinique and Guadeloupe use Euros instead of EC dollars.  I had some Euro left from our trip south, but nobody else had any.  We found an ATM at the post office and got some cash.  We were the first ashore and were expecting the others shortly.  We ducked in a souvenir shop and ran into the folks from Rum Runner and Verna Breeze.  They told us about their last few days of renting a car and spending two days doing nothing but visiting almost all of the dozen rum distilleries on the island.  Sounds like something we need to do.  They also informed us that the large grocery store in Le Marin, Leader Price, was closed because of the strike.

We went back outside and found that Seabbatical and Liquid Courage had come ashore while we were in the souvenir shop, and they had found the ATM.  We then walked down the main street and found several small restaurants open.  We stopped at one bar that served snacks and ordered beers.  The woman working there spoke English, and we did our best at French.  We ordered some french fries to share while we enjoyed a couple of beers.  The local beer here is Lorraine, and much to our delight it comes in 330ml bottles.  That's 12 ounces!  We have been limited to what we referred to as beer shots in St. Lucia, with the little 250ml cans of Piton, or the 275ml bottles.  After two beers, we moved down the street to another place.  This place had baguettes, sandwiches, beer, paninis, and other pastries.  I got a jambon et frommage  (ham and cheese) sandwich and Barb got a slice of quiche lorraine.  The seating area for this place is right on the water and quite nice.  After eating, Barb was getting tired, so I took her back to the boat.  I returned to town a joined the group at another waterfront restaurant where they were having another beer.  We also met another couple here, Bob & Laurie from Tranquila.  At this place we were sitting at a table right by the water, and couldn't see town at all.  When we left, a little before 17:00, we found that a crowd had gathered outside around the town square and the plaza at the end of the dock.  We had no idea what this was about, unless they were waiting for something to happen at the church which is on the square.  We tried asking a few people if they spoke English, but nobody admitted to it.  So back to the boats we went.

As soon as we were back aboard, we started hearing drums over on the beach in front of us.  Through the binoculars, we could tell there was a large group assembling as if there was going to be a parade.  This must be what the people are waiting for.  The drumming got more organized, and after quite a while the parade made it's way over the hill from the beach to town.  Although we could only make out one rhythm to the drumming, there appeared to be several different groups involved.  Through the binoculars we could see a banner being carried by the first group that said something about Carnival.  The drumming went on for a couple of hours as the parade moved through and then around town.  It seemed to end at the market where we could later hear amplified voices that we didn't understand because, of course, it was all French.

For dinner, Barb cooked up some Johnsonville brats and peppers and onions, that we enjoyed on a fresh baguette that we bought at the sandwich shop earlier.

GPS N 14-26.099 W 060-53.247  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9741.

Feb 9

After the net, we made another pilgrimage to Le Marin to try and check in.  This time we found the office open.  The way check in works here, is you sit down at a computer and enter all your data yourself.  This is all the same stuff that is stored in eSeaClear, but the French islands aren't participating in that yet, so having already entered everything there didn't help me.  I entered all my data, although it was a slight challenge.  Computer keyboards are laid out differently in some other countries.  The French keyboard is mostly the same, but a few letters are in different places, so you really had to hunt and peck and watch what you wrote on the screen.  Once you enter all the data, you click a button to print the form, and take it to the officer at the counter.  They glance at the form and your boat documentation, stamp the form and say have a nice day.  Simple.  No fees, no limited length of stay, no fuss.

After we were all checked in, we stopped at Mango Bay for coffee and croissants again.  I haven't been drinking coffee regularly on the boat for a year or more, but I like the strong European style coffee here.  Once we were all done with breakfast we headed back to the boats.  The long dinghy ride was choppier today than yesterday, as the wind is picking up as forecast.  I was up on a plane the whole way, which gives a drier ride than trying to go slow, but going fast over the chop made for a rough ride.

When we were all back on our boats, we all decided to move a little.  We originally anchored near the back of the pack, which means we are about half a mile off the beach to our east.  The forecast is for high winds later in the week, so we are going to move in closer to the beach to reduce the amount of fetch the wind has to kick up chop.  It will also mean shorter dinghy rides in the chop.  Liquid Courage and Lightheart moved first and found spots near the front.  Once they were settled we spoke to them on the radio to see if there was more room.  They said yes, so us and Seabbatical weighed anchor and moved also.  There is a line of big buoys about a thousand feet off the beach, and you are not supposed to anchor inside these buoys.  We slowly crept up to the buoy line and dropped our hook in what looked like a good sandy spot in fifteen feet of water.  The anchor set the first time and we backed down hard on it to make sure we were secure for the blow.

Several of us met for lunch in St. Anne again.  We went to the same sandwich shop.  Barb and I both had paninis this time.  After our sandwiches, we treated ourselves to ice cream bars.  The brand is Magnum, and they are similar to Dove bars, but maybe even better. 

After lunch, we stopped by another boat we had seen in the anchorage.  Our old Danish friends Pia & Erling from Thora To have been here for a couple of weeks already.  They don't have an SSB, so we had not been in touch with them since last time they were in Grenada last year.  We first met them when we all spent our first hurricane season in Grenada and they were in the marina also.  We visited with them for a couple of hours, catching up on where we have all been and mutual friends.

At 18:00, we joined the gang on Tranquila for snacks and sundowners.  Tranquila is a catamaran so there was plenty of room for ten of us in their cockpit.  Bob & Laurie have a cute little dog named Tillie.  Tillie likes it when visitors come to happy hour, because Tillie likes to drink.  She isn't picky either.  She goes for beer, wine, or rum and coke, although she doesn't care for straight rum.

GPS N 14-26.099 W 060-53.247  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9741.

Feb 10

On the net this morning we heard more reports that the strike continues to affect Guadeloupe.  The French minister who was dispatched to fix things apparently returned to Paris yesterday in frustration.  Lightheart and Liquid Courage went in to Le Marin again and found the grocery stores closed again.  I spent the morning writing and running the engine to make hot water and charge batteries.  The weather is forecast to blow hard for several days throughout the Caribbean, so pretty much everybody is staying where they are for a few days.  Our friends Pat & Dori on Sol Y Mar made it to Bequia from Trinidad yesterday, and are trying to catch us, but they won't be moving until the weekend I suspect.  The wind is blowing over twenty knots this morning and forecast to get even stronger through Thursday.  I'm glad we moved closer to the beach, so we only have a little bit of wind chop going by.  The folks who went into Le Marin this morning reported that it was a very wet and rough dinghy ride, so we probably won't be going in there again until the weather calms down.

I wrote all morning, catching up on the logs.  About noon, we went to shore for lunch, joined by Seabbatical and Liquid Courage.  We went to a new place, next to the sandwich place we have been to before.  This place does pizza, and stuffed pizza things.  I don't know what they call them, but they look like a baguette, about a foot long, and they have various fillings on them.  The bread is more like a pizza dough than a baguette.  Barb and I got there first, and I was real hungry, so we didn't wait for the others before ordering.  Barb got one of the pizza things that we thought was ham inside.  Mine was Fruits de mer, which is seafood.  We ordered two beers also.  Well, the beer was in 250ml bottles instead of the 330ml ones next door, the beer wasn't nearly as cold as next door, and the pizza things were ok, but nothing to write home about.  Mine was seafood, although I couldn't tell you exactly what kind of seafood, and Barb's was like a spiced, slice hot dog meat, not ham and cheese like we thought.  When the others arrived, we warned them of the beer issue, and let them make their own choices about food.  After we finished eating, and some others had a bite and a beer, we moved next door where the beer was larger and colder, and those who hadn't eaten found something to their liking.  After a while we decided to walk a bit.  We ventured further south than we had before and explored a couple of side streets.  After a few blocks, we found ourselves at another cafe that also had an internet cafe.  We got more beer, and a couple of people had a bit more to eat.  French food is not generally large servings, whether it's a formal dinner, or a lunchtime sandwich, so this small grazing concept fit us well.  This last place had an ice cream case that not only had the Magnum bars that we had yesterday, but little single serve Ben & Jerry's.  (I think a pint is a single serve, but that's a different story.)  Barb got a little Ben & Jerry's cup, and I had another white chocolate Magnum bar.  After a while, Lynn and Barb left us guys to drink while they looked for open shops.  The proprietor of this place spoke very good English, and was very tolerant of our attempts to order things in French.  Since he spoke good English, we approached him and asked him about the strike.  He said he was afraid it was going to last a while.  He just got an order of supplies this morning, so he thinks he will be able to stay open for another couple of days, but other shops have already closed.  We asked him to explain the issue of the strike, and he said it was twofold.  Part was the racial job issue that I mentioned earlier.  The other issue is over the price of goods.  The prices in the islands tend to be higher than they are in France for many things, even if those things are produced locally and not imported from France.  There is an ATM right next to the cafe we were in, and we kept seeing people try to get money and it was apparently empty.  We heard of a cruiser who wanted to rent a car today, and while the rental place was open and had cars, they wouldn't rent them because there is no gas available.  This could get interesting.

About 16:30, we all decided to call it a day and go back to our boats.  When we got to the dock, Liquid Courage found that somebody had cut and stolen the gas line from their tank to the motor.  In a dinghy, the gas tank is a plastic can holding three to five gallons of gas.  It's connected to the engine by a rubber hose that has a bulb for priming it, and quick connect fittings on each end.  The mystery here was what was taken.  If the gas tank had been stolen it would make sense that somebody needed gas and couldn't get it due to the strike.  But the can was there.  If somebody needed the line for a Tohatsu engine, they would have undone the quick connect fittings, not cut the line.  It made no sense in that it seemed to be an act of vandalism as opposed to theft.  There were at least a dozen dinghies on the dock and no others appeared to have been messed with.  We took Don in our dinghy and towed his dinghy back to Liquid Courage while Seabbatical took Devin.  As it turns out, Seabbatical used to have a Tohatsu engine and still has the fuel line aboard.  Another case of why we cruisers never throw stuff away.

Back on the boat, the wind is still blowing hard, although it may have abated a little since earlier today.  We have a few new neighbors, but nobody too close.  Barb made jambalaya for dinner and we enjoyed the rest of a quiet evening.

GPS N 14-26.099 W 060-53.247  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9741.