June Bank Holiday in the BVIs

Yes, today it is a Bank Holiday.  Everywhere else had it last week (well I don’t actually know about everywhere else, but everywhere I know) but the BVIs is different.  Everywhere is closed except, strangely enough, the supermarkets, and probably some bars.

Mike and I are both awake just after 5am and as we want an early start, Mike gets up, makes the tea and we are away by 7am.  We look over towards Sophisticated Lady but there is no one around.  Motoring past Apple Bay, we look towards Chateau Relaxeau Caribe (Malcolm and Candace’s place) but there was no one waving from the balcony.  (Well, I say we, but actually I had gone back to bed to do some Sudoku leaving Mike at the helm.)

We arrive in the mosquito sauna, aka TMM’s base at Road Reef Marina where it’s lovely to see Penny, fresh from her RV road trip around the Grand Canyon and Utah.  She searches out some books for me and I give her one of mine.  We share an author in common.

Mike has been puzzling over the condition of our aluminium bow sprit.  It has been in one of the bow lockers, with a sail bag on top of it for the last few months.  During that time, the paint has blistered up from it and some strange, putty-like substance has appeared from between the aluminium and the paint itself.  He calls Mark, then Joseph (who I fail to recognise without his beard), then Jock to have a look.  There is much scratching of heads but no one has seen anything like it before.  Strangely enough, after this gunk has been sitting in the sun for a couple of hours it goes rock-hard.

We carry on round the corner to a slip in Inner Harbour.  It is absolutely stifling in the heat.  When we hook up to shore power the temperature shows an initial temperature of 89 degrees and it takes some hours for the a/c to bring it down to the more acceptable level of 78 degrees.  We do some shopping at Bobby’s and Ample Hamper then wait for the full provisioning delivery to arrive from Bobby’s.

For dinner, we treat ourselves to a take-away from Simply Delicious, the local Chinese – quite disgusting and, well, when you’re shattered, simply delicious.

Photo:  A cuddle with hubby

The above photo actually has nothing to do with today.  Rick took it last night but I have no pictures for today and want to use this somewhere, so ……