February 21, 2007 - Canouan

Back in the heart of charter boat territory, we had another incident with bad anchoring. After dark last night a catamaran came nosing into the anchorage, looking for a place to drop anchor. As he slid up between us and a boat quite near to us, Sten and I are both looking at him like, "Oh no you don't." Unfortunately, the evil eye is a bit hard to cast in the dark. Not feeling very good about it, we went to bed, but neither of us slept very well.

In the morning, the wind died completely, allowing the boats at anchor to swing around haphazardly. We took turns keeping an eye on the cat, as its stern came within 10 feet of ours. Because we anchored before them, they should be the ones to move if there is a problem - that's the internationally understood etiquette in these situations. But try explaining that to a French charterer.

I stood in our cockpit, getting rained on, and stared them down. My expression was sour enough to curdle the cream in the cups of cafe au lait that they were sipping. But it had no effect. I was tempted to let them hit us, and let their charter company pay for some gel coat work that we could really use, but Sten counseled that the paperwork would not be worth it. Besides, we'd had enough trouble with the authorities here in SVG. Eventually, when they got too close I turned on our engine and let us slowly idle forward. But I wasn't happy about it.

As the morning wore on and the sun came out, Sten did amazing work cleaning the deck. The entire area round the windlass was stained with rust from hauling in the anchor chain. A dose of On & Off took care of it. It also removed most of Sten's fingerprints, which should come in handy if the house doesn't sell and we need to resort to a life of crime to pay for this trip.

Before On & Off:



After:

We finished making beds, cleaning heads and mopping the floor in time to get into town to do some quick and dirty provisioning before Eryn and Graham's plane landed. For a charter base, the fresh food supply was pretty dismal. That one cabbage and two carrots are that I look so happy to be holding in the photo below were the extent of the fresh veggies we bought.


I went to meet them at the airport, only to find that their plane had been early. When does that happen? Anyway, we headed back to boat and had Belated Christmas, Part II, featuring double handled winch handles, coozies for our nalgene bottles, beer bottles and soda cans, my rabbit (the corkscrew variety - get your heads out of the gutter) and a printer from Suzy.

After cleaning the boat all day, Sten and I were anxious to be off of it, so we all headed ashore to have dinner at the resort. The bar food was pretty good, if a bit salty, and the rum drinks poured with a stiff hand.

I fell asleep listening to Graham and Sten talk about the sorts of technical stuff that makes my eyes glaze over when Sten is trying to explain it to me. I'm so glad he has someone to geek out with for a few days.