Well, we knew that this would be a working stop but certainly did not realise quite HOW long that work would take us!!
The day after moving back on Moontide, Chris went down with a really heavy cold – yes, a cold in the tropics!!! This has meant that the work he wanted to do on the boat had to be put off for a while and even now (nearly 3 weeks later) he can only manage a short while before having to stop and any exertion will still take it out of him.
The area Sam & Steve had rubbed down and primed needed 2 coats of epoxy on and then paint which Chris managed to do and this week the yard has put the anti-fouling on. Moontide is looking really great again! Chris managed to get the “boot-topping” (an extra coat of hard anti-foul) the water line just the other day and the hull is finished!! HURRAY!!!!! Well apart from havig to re-fix the seacocks we took out to ensure they were not damaged during the sand-blasting.
The day after moving back on Moontide, Chris went down with a really heavy cold – yes, a cold in the tropics!!! This has meant that the work he wanted to do on the boat had to be put off for a while and even now (nearly 3 weeks later) he can only manage a short while before having to stop and any exertion will still take it out of him.
The area Sam & Steve had rubbed down and primed needed 2 coats of epoxy on and then paint which Chris managed to do and this week the yard has put the anti-fouling on. Moontide is looking really great again! Chris managed to get the “boot-topping” (an extra coat of hard anti-foul) the water line just the other day and the hull is finished!! HURRAY!!!!! Well apart from havig to re-fix the seacocks we took out to ensure they were not damaged during the sand-blasting.
This is not to say that we’ve not been able to enjoy ourselves too! The terrace outside the hotel rooms has been well used – drinks with Deborah & Nigel followed by a meal in the Zanzibar the night before they left to fly home; aperitif caipirinhas with Claudia & Michael (they still had some cachaça left from Brazil!!) and then not to be outdone we offered aperitif gin & tonics with them a few days later!! Claudia and Michael are now happily back in the water and are looking to move on very shortly. Another French couple we met in St Laurent arrived last week – Michel and Marie-Jo on Avel Dro and we spent a lovely evening with them and Claudia and Michael in the bar upstirs too. Marie –Jo does not speak much English so my school-girl French was given an outing and we managed very well – especially as Claudia (she speaks excellent French as well as English!) could translate when we got into difficulties!!!
Last week we hired a car for a couple of days so we could get all our fuel and provisions and also see a bit more of the island.
We took a trip down to the pitch lake in La Brea about 200 km away towards the south west corner of the island. This is the largest pitch lake in the world and has supplied pitch all over the world. The lake was ‘discovered’ by Sir Walter Raleigh and he was shown how to use it on his boats by the Amerindians. It is non-renewable so will only last another 300 years!! We had a tour and could walk over the hard (but flexing!) “elephant skin” crust and the guide showed us areas where the skin had not formed and the pitch was soft right up to the surface. We saw a photo of someone who had fallen into an area like this and who had been rescued with not much time to spare as the pitch had covered him up to his neck. It was really weird to know you were walking on the crust with about 35 foot of pitch below you!! There were many air pockets in the skin and some of these were bubbling as air and water were pushed up by the pitch. It is not used quite as much as it used to be as synthetic pitch is available – just as well really as it is another non-renewable resource and will only last another 300 years! |
The journey to the pitch lake was “interesting”. I had downloaded some directions from Google maps but I think some of the mapping photos had been left out as on the map it looked as if one road stopped in the middle of nowhere. Google took this information and decided that we needed travel along some roads that would definitely be “un-classified” in England! Perhaps I should have realised as examples of the names of the roads were Debe TRACE, Rahamut TRACE, Berridge TRACE etc – yes just barely a trace of a road! In places they were no more than very rough farm tracks – maybe with half of the track made up and the other filled up with stones but not evened at all etc. In other places half the road had sunk by about 2 foot and on one T junction it had sunk in two different directions!! Good fun eh?
(WHY does the colour change suddenly play up???)
(WHY does the colour change suddenly play up???)
We also took a drive to look at the Bamboo Cathedral which is just close by. The HUGE bamboo is amazing as on either side it bends over the pathway and meets above. I think that it would look even better after the rainy season when there are more green leaves to fill in the gaps in the branches. It was also incredibly noisy when the wind blow through it and it felt quite dangerous as if the tall, tall stems would just come tumbling down!
It has come as quite a shock to us to find that Easter has arrived (and now gone!) especially as today (Wednesday) is also a Bank Holiday here but I am HOPING that perhaps we can get back in the water shortly now and get going again.
Unfortunately this stop has cut down our time in the Caribbean and we think we may now go straight to Dominica, spend a few days/week there, possibly Iles des Saintes and then to Antigua for 2 weeks where we will leave to cross back about 1st May. We then hopefully have 6 weeks or so in the Azores before our final leg home!
Unfortunately this stop has cut down our time in the Caribbean and we think we may now go straight to Dominica, spend a few days/week there, possibly Iles des Saintes and then to Antigua for 2 weeks where we will leave to cross back about 1st May. We then hopefully have 6 weeks or so in the Azores before our final leg home!
That's it for now - I’ll post again when we have more news about moving on.