Last night we finished watching all the Red Dwarf episodes we have with us. I had forgotten how disappointing the last series was, in particular the very last episode. Still – it kept us entertained.
Today has been a bit of a challenge. We decided to walk to town. I had the laptop in case there was somewhere we decided to use it. I had it wrapped in a waterproof bag inside our backpack. I also carried drinks, etc in case we got thirsty. The point of mentioning this is that we did not use the laptop nor drink the drinks so I had this extra weight for no benefit.
The walk to town was about a mile and a half. Again – many stores were closed but some were open. The skies are overcast today and often drizzly. We had a couple of bouts of very strong winds with torrential rain after which it felt close and humid. In town less than half the shops were open. We perused a couple of markets and bought a small hand painting as a souvenir.
The real highlight of the day was spent in the tourist office with Micheline Dellevi, a hospitality agent, who spoke very good english. She was incredibly helpful including calling up Fed Ex to find out if our Hookah has arrived. Our expectations were quite low as the ports have now ground to a halt. Container ships arrive but are not unloaded. No doubt the hookah would be caught up in all this. To our surprise it has arrived. So our plan to hire a car tomorrow now includes collecting the Hookah
which we’ll do first. If we can’t get a hire car then we’ll just have to taxi over and forget the walk.
Micheline was enthralled with our trip and wanted to see our blog. In turn we promised to include her picture which will be inserted whenever we can get internet access.
Back at the marina we popped into the supermarket. The lines at the check out were very long but we felt it worth picking up a few bits and pieces. It looks like there’s a bout of a siege mentality going on as most people had very full trolleys despite the shelves in places being empty. As I was paying for our food sirens were heard outside and a big guy with tight shades came in with a megaphone and ordered everyone out. I’m not sure if this was just lunch break or the heavies coming to enforce the strike. We had spoken to one shopkeeper early in the day who kept an ear out for the street in case she heard trouble coming so she could shut shop. She had the most dire outlook saying a lot of this was race related and that it may easily descend into violence and guns. Didn’t get that impression elsewhere fortunately.
As we returned to Dignity we had a couple of surprises. First she was practically on the other side of the channel and secondly we found the entire anchor chain let out. Turns out she had started slipping her anchor during the earlier extreme gusts of winds and some folks had come along and let out the entire chain to improve holding.
What did stop her slide was in fact a 2 inch thick underwater stranded cable of some sort. This of course came up with the anchor – a formidable thing to see. We had a new trick in our book thanks to some earlier advice. We tied a dock line to one bow cleat. I went out in the dinghy and threaded the line under the cable we had dragged up and Helen tied this to the other bow cleat. Helen then lowered the anchor letting the dock line take the weight of the cable. I then pulled the anchor away
while Helen again raised it, this time without the cable being snagged. All that remained to do was get me back on the boat and released the dock line sending the cable back to the bottom and restoring our liberty.
We have been paying 10 euros per day for the privilege of anchoring near the marina. It’s the same price to use one of their mooring balls so that’s what we’ve done. We feel a bit more secure now.
We’re beginning to feel the need to get out of here more and more. The strike is a big downer and curtailing our activities. We have diminishing amounts of gas left for the dinghy. When we’re out and about tomorrow we’ll take our gerry can in case we can find somewhere to fill it. That’ll be a relief. But it’s getting to the point where we’ll be much happier in Dominica than here. Fortunately we already have our departure papers so we don’t need to clear out. If all goes well tomorrow and we collect the Hookah we may well set sail for Dominica on Friday. If we can scrounge a bit of fuel we may squeeze in Marie Galant or one or two other towns on the SE coast.
So the rest of today will be another lazy afternoon. We can’t do much. Yesterday we did spend some time mapping out the through hulls on the port side. We could complete the job and do the starboard side today. We have plenty of books to read and that’s not a bad thing at all.
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