A day of rest

I was very pleased to wake up late, after a very peaceful sleep, the chop does not enter the marina waters, so it is perfectly still at night. Such bliss! The morning was taken up with sorting a few things out. Our bilge pumps are running a lot and there seems to be water coming in from somewhere. Rowan had found a list of faults from other Nautitech owners and had asked the broker to sort them all out. One was the anchor issue which we had to sort out in Georgetown. The other thing the other owners had recommended was non return valves on the bilge outlet and although they said they had done it, it looks like they haven’t and that is our issue. Not good for our volvo engines to be sitting in salt water! He has checked the hull and our hit on the coral has done a little grazing which looks superficial, but it did take a 10p chip out the rudder. I think we will live with that too.

Well a few boats are here from our last stop, the Germans who are hanging out here until they get a weather window to return to Germany, which looks like sometime in May, so a long wait. The American pro racing sailor and his wife are here, their daughters have gone home. A couple more American boats. But the biggest surprise was a guy came over to introduce himself as they have the only other British boat, and can you believe it they come from Beccles (for those of you don’t know, it is 6 miles away from us in the UK)! Honestly we couldn’t believe it, but they are in a totally different sailing class to us. They are retired teachers from a school in Lowestoft and he was a RYA sailing instructor too. In the eighties they took a year off to sail around the Atlantic, then in 2012 for 5 years they sailed around the world going around the coast of Africa. They have a smallish 36 foot boat, and decided to come over to the Caribbean for a year. They crossed the Atlantic and got in a week ago, they have made a decision that they are safer going back to the UK, so they too are waiting for a weather window to return. Yikes there is NO way I am doing a transatlantic, I’m so worried it may give Rowan ideas!

We hired a car for a few days and went into town to get a few boating repair goodies and essentials. Our German lady, Regina (I’ve just discovered her name at last), who needed oil filters came with us. Neither she nor Rowan were successful, so I guess we will get it all Fedex’d across as we are going to be here a while. We then had a little shop at the great supermarket which still seems to be very well stocked.

In the afternoon the German couple invited us to join them swimming at the other side of the bay where there is nice clear water and little beaches cut into the coral cliffs. We went in separate dinghies and on the way back we went up the little creek next to the marina. People have homes along it and their own private berths for their boats. Quite depressing as there is a lot of evidence of hurricane damage with boats strewn everywhere. I suppose it is too difficult to remove them, so it becomes a graveyard of boats.

We have heard that the Bahamas has totally closed down and not allowing any boats in, or for boats to move around. So I guess we can cross off our only remaining other option. We had hoped that our 3 month cruising visa we bought for there would allow us in, but doesn’t look like it. We hear more tomorrow about the T&C’s lockdown plans. Off to sleep wondering when we will ever be on the move again or be able to get home, as the papers say gov advice is for anyone overseas to get home promptly before all flights close. Not too worried as all the kids seem fine, and Phoebs is looking after our geriatric powder monkey, Coco. We have food for a couple of weeks and this is a very pleasant, comfy marina.