Back on Jeannius – 20/07/11

Jeannius is being cleaned and prepared for charter so we are unable to get on her until 4 pm. 

At around 2 pm and with the car fully loaded with all the stuff from Penny’s as well as the stuff we brought with us from the UK (thankfully not much) we arrive at Conch hopefully thinking we might just get on early.  No chance.  Instead we go off and get some shopping for our guests to have breakfast tomorrow, as well as Supavalue to buy our frozen supplies of shrimp and chicken.

When I put my hand into the freezer to get the large size shrimp out, I can feel the packets are soft, even the ones at the back.  The smaller ones on the next shelf down are fine so I call an assistant over and point out the problem.  She ignores me and walks away.  I find someone else and drag them over to inspect the shrimp.  She stuffs her hand into the pile, agrees that they are not frozen (no, really?) and tells me to take the smaller ones which are below.  She doesn’t seem to want to get the point.  I tell her that the defrosted ones need to be taken out of the freezer now and disposed of.  She mutters something unintelligible (but probably not polite) and walks off, leaving the stuff where it is, no doubt to re-freeze and poison a whole host of customers over the next few days. 

We turn up again at Conch at exactly 4 pm and thankfully are allowed on.  It takes forever to get everything over to the boat as we are parked about as far away from the car as you can get.  My first priority is to get the frozen stuff into the freezer, so you can imagine my horror to discover that the freezer is not working again.  It has started once more with the intermittent problem we had had since South Africa (although it had behaved itself since Brazil).  Seeing my mounting panic, Ross from Conch Charters goes to The Pub next door and Princess allows me to use her freezer to store the stuff until the freezer engineer arrives tomorrow.  Phew.

Looking at Jeannius is strange.  She has none of our stuff and looks empty and bereft.  I cannot believe this was our home for the last three years but heyho, there’s work to be done and no time to dwell on things like that.

I get most of the stuff stowed but have to leave some stuff in boxes – there is no time to unpack before our guests call for a lift from the ferry dock.  I am unhappy that I have no time to prepare but get my happy face arranged to greet them, three generations of the Zigler family.

Having been travelling for almost two days, they are exhausted and hungry.  As Mike still has the hire car, he takes them to Spaghetti Junction for dinner, discovering on his way back, that the staff there had just been given notice to quit as the restaurant is closing.  Luckily they return have a really good meal – I was a bit worried that disgruntled staff might make less than decent food but they are obviously professional enough to put on a good show).  Mike and I eat peanut butter sandwiches on board, and flop into bed as soon as our guests are ready to collapse.