We had an early start on Monday morning as we'd agreed the night before to try and find Mike’s propeller which had dropped off at some point between him anchoring near to us and taking his position at the other side of the bay at the finish line. It was a bit of a long shot but we thought it was worth a go, besides we were both keen to go diving again.
We have developed a fairly healthy lifestyle with the 12 hour nights here (sunset around 6pm and sunrise about 6am) of going to bed fairly early usually before 10am and up at around 6am. I think we both look much younger for having a decent sleep everyday and it is great to have a bit of time before the sun gets too hot (I know the trials we face!). So, we had got up and had a light breakfast, prepared all the dive gear and taken our tender over to Mike’s boat before 8am on Monday morning. It was quite choppy and we have now confirmed that our tender is really a bit too small for us both and two sets of dive gear as I had to bail the occasional spray coming in over the bow. We had a bit of a deadline to meet as Mike was due to go off watch at 10am, so we got straight in the water when we arrived. The visibility was not great only about 2m, but the water temperature is 27-28 degrees. As soon as we descended we we surrounded by a shoal of small colourful fish and saw a large lionfish-type colourful fish with ornate laterally fins of inky blue on a white body. We unfortunately did not find the prop, but we did enjoy the dive, although it was a sandy bottom we saw several live conches buried in the sand and a few calcified shells laying on it. There was also some coral and assorted small fish flitting around on the sand, I’m afraid I’ll need to get an ID book to improve my descriptions before the next dive!
We were back to boat by 9am and enjoyed the day pottering around the boat. Kevin had a run ashore in the tender to maintain the vigil for the missing battery charger on route from the UK. He’d also been to collect our Fedex delivery of two steering bolts from Fountaine Pajot as the bushes are wearing on ours. Annoyingly, in what seems to be the way of things when you have a boat, we were presented with yet another ridiculous bill. The customs agent who we did not ask to work on the retrieval of the parcel from customs, which should not have been stopped anyway (delivery of spares for a Yacht In Transit should not attract import duty) wanted $150 US for his work. Kevin pointed out this was about 5 times the value of the item and we hadn’t even asked for his help, after a long debate Kevin paid 40$ECD (£10) as he’d collected the parcel from Castries which had saved us a tedious job.
Life on anchor is really very easy in a busy place like Rodney bay, there is Gregory who provides a daily fruit delivery service which we make full use of any have fruit salads daily. There is also a boat based Laundry service called Sparkle Laundry who pass by most days or you can call them on the VHF radio and they collect.
Gregory the fruit man on delivery, he's fairly easy to spot or hear arriving with his conch shell horn
Another beautiful sunset on anchor
Our friends Jonny & Kate on Newtsville (blog in links section) also completed their Transatlantic crossing today, arriving into Falmouth Harbour, Antigua after 25 days at sea and 2876 miles since departing Gran Canaria. So many congratulations to them and Kate’s brother Roo on board as crew for a successful crossing!
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