I keep thinking about the horrendous two days I’m going to have when we get back to the BVIs and have to prepare Jeannius for bareboat charter again. For the next couple of weeks we have guests in all three spare cabins and therefore have nowhere to organise my nautical worldly possessions into boxes. Even worse, most of the stuff we have in the starboard aft cabin will be dumped on the floor in the companionway to make room for one of the guests. It’s going to be fun and will be interesting to see how long it takes me to trip over everything.
So Thursday passes in a minor haze of mental lists but it’s a different matter for Mike as he discovers that our toilet is no longer pumping in sea water for its flushing activity. By the time he’s discovered this, he’s already been in the sea once, swimming under the boat to check the inlet pipes for the engines which he does periodically anyway. I lie on my bed under the open hatch and the fan full on, watching him poke around with an assortment of long flexible things to clear the blockage but it doesn’t work. In the water he goes again, poking at the relevant sea water inlet pipe from the other end with a piece of old hosepipe. He discovers a partial plastic bag (always a danger when these come anywhere near a boat) and some barnacles. He scrapes them away as best he can and luckily water starts to come back in. I quickly close off the inlet before we sink and the bilges pump it back out. One working toilet again.
On Friday it’s time for me to brave the local buses alone and go and meet Jutta for our trip into town. Mike drops me off at the dinghy dock and I wander along the road to Nimrod’s rum shack where I can sit in the shade and wait for the bus. One comes along after about 10 minutes, thankfully with few people in it as it is now past the morning rush hour. In another 10 minutes I am walking around the outside of the marina. I know I have to wait for a few minutes for Jochem to bring Jutta over in the dinghy to meet me so in the meantime I nip into Foodland to use their customer toilet – only there isn’t one. I get directed to use the staff one upstairs but no one knows where the key is or whether I am actually allowed to use it and eventually I give up and leave – I can cross my legs on the bus!
I am looking forward to seeing the shops and markets in St Georges. Mike has not wanted to visit and as Jutta and I walk around, boy am I glad I hadn’t bothered dragging him there. What a disappointment. I’m not sure what I expected but whatever it was, I must have expected, well … more.
We first head for the large open market and find the shoe repairers that Jutta was looking for. Michael, the shoe man, heels her shoes while we wait but since he is incapable of doing two things at once – mending and talking – and since he is determined to tell us all about the countries he visited when he worked for one of the cruise ship lines, the mending takes rather a long time.
We say we will return and walk around the fruit and vegetable market. The produce does look lovely but one stall selling this stuff looks very much like another and each trader calls us to inspect his or her wares. It gets a bit tiresome saying no thank you because you know you don’t want to buy anything today and we are deep in conversation and unwittingly ignore a lady plying her wares until she shouts at us for being rude and ignoring her as we walk by. When Jutta tries to explain that everyone is shouting at us the woman retorts that if we don’t like the way they behave in Grenada we shouldn’t bother coming back. Talk about over-reacting!
When we return to the shoe stall, the mending is ready but the alteration to a new pair of sandals is not, so Michael kindly arranges for a bench to be brought out and a drink of water appears for us. While we wait, George appears. George is the proud owner of the North Pole Bar and proudly extols the virtues of his cookery skills. By the time he has finished describing his local fish soup I am salivating and desperate to try some. What a salesman! We follow him back through a rabbit warren of market stalls and rum shacks to his little shack where I partake of his soup and Jutta has a rum punch – what else?! Her rum punch is good but I feel he hyped his culinary expertise a little. The soup overall has a nice, spicy flavour and the dumplings thud to the base of my stomach the way they should. But the fish? Well I know there’s something in the bowl resembling something that once lived due to the amount of bone and thick, leathery black skin, but it could be chef’s fingers for all I know and I leave it all at the bottom of the bowl. Still, George at the North Pole is an experience and we are both glad we paid his little establishment a visit.
After the excitement and local colour of the market, we visit the mall. Zero excitement here. Presumably it was designed for the cruise ships but they must be hellishly disappointed by this one. There’s a duty free shop for perfume, spirits and cigarettes and a handful of jewellers but the rest of the shops are full of tourist tat. We don’t linger long although Jutta manages to buy some clothes. There are some nice old colonial buildings around, some still bearing scars of the last hurricane which devastated the island some years ago but really after a few hours we had had enough and hop on a bus back to the marina.
Once back at the marina it’s straight into the pool then lunch (a more substantial callaloo soup this time) then back to Chessie to sew one of Jutta’s dresses for her. Jochem gives me a lift in the dinghy back to Foodland but we only get half way across the marina when he runs out of fuel and we have to row back to the boat and I walk all the way round. Leaving later than I should have, the buses are now full. Most of the ones which pass me are the right bus number (2) but going to the wrong places. I will never figure this out! If they are going to different places, why do they have the same bloody number – insane! Anyway, I eventually get on a bus and everyone shuffles up to make room for me – I manage to set one bum cheek on a seat and cling on for dear life.
Mike is waiting for me at Clarkes Court and we have a rather wet dinghy ride back to the boat straight into the wind and waves both of which have picked up just as I set foot in the dinghy.
Mike has had a fun day of doing engine stuff and trying to fix the rev counter. The bloody thing obviously didn’t want fixing as it fought back and knocked off another chunk of his head. That’ll be more blood on the pillow tonight!
The next day is filled with reading and relaxing although I get very anal about Mike’s filing system on his computer and spend hours re-organising everything. Frighteningly, I enjoy this.
Sunday we are supposed to meet Jutta and Jochem for a lobster lunch at Coco Beach. Typically we have the first rain since Allison and John left and the tropical downpours sweep through the anchorage with alarming regularity bringing with them winds gusting over 30 knots. Mike decides it is not safe to leave the boat as similar conditions a few weeks ago here had boats dragging their anchors all over the place so we have to cancel.
The downpours continue for most of the day but things start to calm down in the late afternoon. By sunset the anchorage is like a millpond again and we are treated to beautiful red skies.
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