Chance Encounter … Sunday 11th Feb 2018
As befits a Sunday morning, we had a slow start today. Mike baked bread for breakfast and we
lingered quite a while over grapefruit and fresh bread with jam. Then there were the usual necessary chores—running
the engine (for the refrigeration) and the water-maker.
It was approaching the crack of noon when Mike and Simon set
off to snorkel on the other side of the bay.
I elected to stay on the boat, using the time to do some laundry with
water from the early part of the water-maker cycle. Each time we start up the water-maker, there
is some water produced which is too high in salt to drink but largely
desalinated compared to sea-water. My
top priority was to wash my “sailing clothes”.
I had figured out that the three days of travel north were likely to
involve a fair amount of spray and a number of splashes. So I kept a set of
clothes for the sailing hours. By the
time we arrived in Soufriere, the shorts were crispy enough to stand up by
themselves. The t-shirt was only
marginally less crusty. I’m sure that my
hand washing was not up to machine washed standards, but I was able to fold the
shorts without crackling noises...
I had most of a lunch prepared by the time Mike and Simon
got back from their adventure. After
lunch we decided to land on the “shingle beach” (rocks not sand) adjacent to
our mooring and go for a walk along the track that leads back to town. We were a bit concerned about the security of
the dinghy on this remote beach, so we took the engine off, left it on Cotinga
and rowed ashore. The idea was to make the boat light enough so that we could
carry it up the beach and lock it to a tree.
Having accomplished that we set off for our walk. Once we entered the town, we found a
bar/restaurant to have a drink.
Suddenly a voice said something like “I can’t seem to get
away from you”. After a few seconds we
recognized the speaker as one of the Danish people who were on the dock next to
us at Rodney Bay. Strangely enough we
had run into this group on Bequia several times. Mette told us that she had elected to fly
from St. Vincent to St. Lucia rather than undertake the sail with such a poor
forecast. Considering that today was meant to be the day with the biggest winds
and very large seas, we could see why she had made that choice. By the time we had finished our drink at
about 5pm, “True Blue” had not arrived.
We persuaded Mette to walk with us with a view to waiting on our
boat. We reached the beach and re-launched
our dinghy in time to see the tender to ‘True Blue” setting off toward town. Mike rowed Mette over to her vessel and she
was happily re-united with her crew.
We had a [pleasant evening aboard, but are becoming more
convinced that the majority of Caribbean anchorages are just horribly rolly.
Gloria
The trail to Soufriere from Magretoute Beach
Cattle egret
Colorful boats in Soufriere
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