Today is the day for beaching the boat and cleaning its bottom. There is so much growth - most of the anti fouling has now come off - that it is slowing us down and as it still looks like we will face north easterly winds when we eventually make a move from here, we will need all the help we can get.
I do a bit of interior boat cleaning in the morning but nothing too strenuous. I know what the afternoon has in store for me!
Mike goes out for a scout around the bay to find the exact spot to beach Jeannius. He is armed with a poking stick aka the boat hook. As the putters around in the dinghy, I can see him leaning over the side and poking at the sea bed to see if there are any rocks. Now if this was the BVIs, French Polynesia or any one of the huge list of places with crystal clear waters, this would not be necessary. However, the water here is full of silt, and although clean, is anything but clear. The bottom is also weedy in places which makes it doubly difficult to see what’s what. He comes back convinced he has found the right spot but I’m still nervous. It was so easy in Darwin where we could see what we were doing.
Around noon, Jutta, Jochem and Eline come over for a drink on their way to shore. Poor Jochem has the unenviable job of attempting to fix one of the toilets on Chessie today, a shit job if ever there was one! They are thinking of leaving this afternoon if he is successful but since they are now heading out for lunch, I think they will end up staying one more night before departing. Ocean Jasper and Crazy Horse are probably leaving tomorrow too so we will be alone once more in the bay (apart from the zillions of small ferry boats).
We have a light lunch and then have an early nap. We need to take Jeannius up to the beach when the tide is about half way out – at about 2.30 pm – and then work like crazy before it gets dark and then wait until the tide floats us off again. Mike sets the alarm and we manage to doze a bit even though the temperature is 33 degrees.
The alarm goes off, and with a huge level of trepidation, I get the anchor up and we motor slowly towards the beach, meandering carefully between the ferries and mooring buoys, most of which are marked with a couple of bottles and are therefore not easy to see. We follow a slalom course through until we are about 100 foot from the shore, then with just 2.6 ft of water below the hull (actual depth about 4.5 ft), we come to a gentle stop as our keels hit the bottom. Thankfully there is no grinding sound so we know we have landed in sand, mud or weed. Then we wait. In Darwin, the tide rushed out and you could watch the water level move steadily down the sides of the boat. Here, it inches out so slowly that you wonder whether it is going out at all. At 2.1 ft, Mike gets his cleaning gear on and slips into the murky water, being able to stand up when he gets to about the middle of the boat. I put the evil moment off another 10 minutes or so, then donning my silly white hat and one of his old white tee-shirts, I get in too.
Now anyone who knows me, knows how pathetic and nerdy I am in the water. To make matters worse for myself, I am wearing deck shoes, carrying a spatula to clean the hulls with and am terrified of attempting to put my feet down until I KNOW I can stand up. Mike is nowhere to be seen as I choose the wrong side of the boat to swim down. I start to yell for him and he doesn’t answer. I yell time and time again but with the noise of the sea and the ferries, he can’t hear me. With my strokes getting ever more desperate I round the side of the boat and see that he is chest high standing in the water and I realise I can put my feet down. Panic over. I admonish him for not hearing me and he admonishes me for not letting him know I was going in the water before actually going in.
The sea bed under my shoes is disgusting. I have no idea what I am standing in and really don’t want to think about it. Mike, barefooted, says it is slimy and squidgy. The hull of the boat is worse. Close up, Jeannius’ beard is much worse that we realised. It varies from the green grass-like stuff, about 6 inches long, to actual weed of about an inch wide. Living in this stuff are strange creatures. There are the usual barnacles and tiny crabs at the bow and stern, but also strange red blobs which look disgustingly like pieces of tomato. As we scrape and scrub, all this stuff goes in the water and floats around you until the tide takes it away. The occasional wake of a passing boat sends globs of it flying towards your face, and it smells like a rockpool at a British seaside in the summer, a pungent seaweedy smell, not unpleasant exactly, but not inviting either.
For three hours we scrape and scrub. There are 176 feet of hull to be scraped and we go over most of it twice because by the time we have done it all once, the tide has gone out further and we can see bits that we missed.
Having started off in water up to my shoulders, I finish in water just above my waist. As I jump in the air with my scrubber to clean as much of the hull as I can high up as well as the waterline, wearing nothing but a bikini bottom and white tee-shirt, I realise I must look like an advert for why middle aged women should not enter wet tee-shirt competitions! Ah well, it gives the people on the beach something to laugh at.
Just before 6 pm we finish, and as we throw our cleaning materials up on the steps and prepare to clamber out, Rosemary and Bill come over to see how we are doing. Bill offers to come over later in the dinghy if we need help getting off the sea bed when high tide comes.
Just as they are leaving, two local kids swim over, jabber at me in Portuguese and clamber onto the boat. Mike and I sit and watch as they wander around the outside of the boat, asking us questions that we don’t understand. The try out the seats at the front, lie down on the trampolines and giggle when I squirt them with fresh water from the hose. They take some time looking out with the binoculars, pose for photos then jump off and swim back to shore.
Photo: Cheeky but cute
Cute as they are, I pull the swim ladder up quickly before they can bring all their mates back for a visit and go inside for a hot and very welcome shower.
We are both absolutely shattered so I just take a container of fish stew out of the freezer that I prepared a couple of weeks ago and sit and watch some TV until it is roughly time for the tide to come back in. It’s almost 9 pm and we sit and wait as the water inches higher. The boat eventually starts to rock and turns round 90 degrees, luckily in the direction we want it to go, and after half an hour of wobbling around we are off and can motor slowly through the obstacle course, me on the bow with the searchlight panning across our path for buoys and ropes. We get through unscathed and drop the anchor once more just 17 feet from our pervious position. Then it’s a well earned Amarula for me and a rum for Mike before we flop into bed, aching and exhausted.
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