Lavers blog, 7th 2008-2009 entry

February 2-4, 2009, le Marin

Three days alone at anchor in le Marin. Monday and Tuesday are “allergy days”, so Larry is not very active He does manage to contact Catharina on Skype. It is nice to hear her voice and to have her back from her Africa trip safe and sound. Larry continues to find small items that need to be taken care of – replacing a burned-out light bulb, servicing another halyard winch. The major task is scraping the rust off the engine mounts and transmission case, cleaning them with phosphoric acid, then spraying them with “Yanmar gray” paint. We shall see how long the face lift lasts. Elisabeth emails from Bristol that it is cold this time of year in Rhode Island. Perhaps we should rethink our plans to take the boat north! On Wednesday, Larry gets his long-awaited haircut. He is now so beautiful that it hurts when he looks in the mirror. Well, I guess there are other possible explanations for that.

February 5, 2009, le Marin

Today we experience Island Time in spades. Larry takes the dinghy in to the marina at 10:00 to pick up Daniel, the local diesel mechanic, at 10:30 as agreed. He is not at the Yanmar dealer where we had agreed to meet, but a phone call determines that he will now come at 12:15 instead. Larry goes to Mango Bay to get on the Internet and returns to the dealer at 12:15. Another phone call, and Larry is told by the dealer that Daniel will be there in 10 or 15 minutes. After about 20 minutes, Daniel calls to ask if Larry can pick him up at Bichik Services at le Carenage, the boat yard, about a 5 minute rde by dinghy from the marina. When he gets there, Larry finds a man drinking a beer and talking to another man. He asks after Daniel, and the man drinking the beer replies “c’est moi.” He will be ready to go in five minutes. After about 10 minutes Daniel says that he has to deliver a dinghy to one of his clients on a boat in the harbor. Would Larry pick him up at his client’s boat? At least it is on the way back to Singoalla. When they finally arrive at Singoalla, Daniel spends about ten minutes looking at the engine and shaking various wires, then announces that we do not have an engine problem. The engine is working fine. What we have is an electrical problem and he is not an electrician. There is some good news, however. Daniel does not charge us for his services as even he can see that he really hasn’t done anything, and he does call around to various electricians until he finds one who can come on Saturday morning to look at our engine. This is for a problem we have been trying to have addressed since Monday.
In the afternoon Larry goes to the rental car agency to confirm that the car he has ordered will be available to pick up Leif and Lars tomorrow. At first the young clerk says there are no cars available and that Larry should have reserved a car. He has not listened when Larry asked about the reservation because he is more interested in chatting with his friends who are in the office. After some confusion as Larry begins to wax indignant, the clerk finds that there is indeed a reservation and everyone is all smiles. Oui, monsieur, the car will be here tomorrow.

February 6, 2009, le Marin

Cleaning day to get ready for guests this evening. As Larry is reorganizing the lockers to provide storage space for his guests he sees a cockroach, the only one we have ever seen on the boat. They are the scourge of the tropics, and most often come on board as eggs in cardboard cartons. We have been very careful to never bring cardboard onto the boat, and it is generally only left on deck for a few minutes. But somehow we now have one, and that probably means that we have many more. Larry spends an hour or so cleaning out lockers and sprinkling boric acid in all the crevices he can get to where cockroaches might travel. With luck, this will take care of the problem. In the evening Larry picks up the rental car and heads for the airport to pick up Leif and Lars. On the way a big dog runs out into the road just in front of the car and before Larry can even hit the brakes he hits the dog at about 70 kph. The result is not good for either dog or car, but the car is still drivable and Leif and Lars are picked up and returned to the boat without further incident. They have brought with them a giant box of items that Elisabeth has purchased to replace broken ones on the boat.

February 7, 2009, le Marin

Larry gets up before his guests and replaces the light fixture over the nav station while they sleep. Marc, the electrician, arrives as promised at 8:30. He is very pleasant and, to our relief, competent and speaks pretty good English. Larry explains that the engine appears to work OK, but the alarms don’t sound as they should when turning the key on or off. He is worried that we will not be properly notified of a more serious engine malfunction. Marc tests the systems and isolates the problem to the buzzer itself. We have some fun with the pronunciation of the word “buzzer” in French. He will be back Monday with a new buzzer. Larry, Leif and Lars eat lunch at Mango Bay, then set off for a shortened island tour before the car is due to be returned at 5:00. We first visit the La Mauny distillery – it is closed. We see that most filling stations are also closed. We decide to stop for groceries at the giant Carrefour super market, but it is closed too. There is a general strike going on – it’s a French island, remember? Traffic begins to build up as people desperately search for gasoline, so we turn around and head back towards the marina. We make a short detour to Les Salines beach at the southern tip of the island, where Leif and Lars are excited to discover the French custom of bathing topless. One “bather”, in particular, causes a great deal of favorable comment. We extend the car rental until Monday, and will make another attempt at an island tour tomorrow. We just make it to the local grocery store before it closes. Larry makes pina coladas, Leif performs magic in the galley, and we retire happy.

February 8, 2009, le Marin

Larry is up early. He makes coffee and replaces the foot pump for salt water under the galley sink. We use salt water to pre-rinse dirty dishes, thus greatly extending the fresh water supply on board. Leif and Lars wake up about two hours later and, after breakfast, we set off on our island tour. We stop for a photo opportunity at the Sacre Coeur Cathedral, a smaller imitation of the church by the same name at Monmartre, Paris. We have a beautiful drive on twisty roads through the rain forest, look in awe at the steep hillsides, and stop for lunch at the Point du Vue restaurant on the Atlantic coast. After lunch we stop for rum tasting at the St. Charles distillery, then head back home. Carrefour is still closed, and the parking lot is blocked off by rows of overturned shopping carts. We can’t find a filling station with any fuel and the local grocery is also closed. Leif talks a restaurant into selling us some sauce Bolognese. Larry manages to find a convenience store with baguettes and we return to the boat for a good spaghetti dinner prepared by chef Leif.

February 9, 2009, le Marin

Marc, the electrician, calls to tell us he will be out at 1:15, so our planned departure for St. Lucia will have to wait for a day. We return the car, and are told that the strike is spreading. He local grocery stores are now closed so no food shopping is possible. The local farmer’s market is open, so we are able to stock up on vegetables. The marina fuel dock is closed so we can’t get water or dinghy fuel there. We are told that Bichik Services has some gasoline, so we take the dinghy and hurry over to he boat yard to see if this is true. We are not in desperate need of dinghy fuel yet, but what we have won’t last many days. We are told that Bichik will open their pump to boats and motor scooters, but not cars, at 2:00. Leif goes to the nearby restaurant and gets the restaurant to sell us entrecotes that we can cook on board. Just as we are about to leave Bichik starts the gas pump at 1:00, and allots a maximum of 20 euros of fuel per customer. As it happens, our fuel tank takes 19 euros, so we fill it up and head back to the boat to meet Marc. He has re-diagnosed our problem – he thinks the replacement used buzzer he installed on Saturday is also faulty, but he advises us to buy a new buzzer elsewhere. It is too expensive on Martinique. Leif and Larry replace the 30 year old hand pump in the head. It is nice to have a new one that doesn’t leak. Lars helps Larry install the new roller furling line to replace the previous chafed one. Leif makes pytt I panna, a Swedish high-class version of hash, for dinner. We discuss what to do about the strike, and decide to head for St. Lucia as soon as weather permits.