Bloody Halyards!

We woke up with the news that our next guests, the family from Fen Farm Dairy who make the delicious Baron Bigod brie, were not allowed onto their flight, as Dulcie had produced a positive PCR test. They checked with SVG (St Vincent and the Grenadines) health authority who said they would accept a negative lateral flow test, but I had warned them that it is the airlines who take the flak, so they will be the ones rigid about the rules. Dulcie had Covid a few weeks ago, but couldn’t get a letter of waiver as she never recorded it with the NHS. She has had repeated negative lateral flow tests. Poor things had to make a snap decision or lose their money on the flights, so they are coming to Grenada on Friday instead. We will check out of SVG and sail to Grenada to pick them up as long as our Lateral Flow tests we have to do before leaving are negative.

After breakfast we motored (no main halyard) back to Blue Lagoon in St Vincent, taking just under an hour. We managed to anchor successfully, the first time we have anchored with yet another new shackle since the original was lost. It really is too difficult for me to get to now, and appears to be a two man job.

The rigger guy was on time (remarkable for the Caribbean!) and gave his opinion on what needed doing, and produced a quote for Catana. His 3 workers came on board after lunch with our halyard now spliced to attach the original block back at the top of the mast. Apparently it was really hard to splice because the rope has been under such tension it has knitted all the fibres very close together, he warned us that it was not the prettiest job but would do the job required. Let’s hope so! Then the fun began, with the one guy up the mast in the baking heat, he also had to reattach our aerial that keeps being knocked over. Unfortunately the mousing line was such a thin string it had come off the wheel at the first corner at the bottom of the mast. Finally after a lot of fiddling in the access in the saloon area, the mouse was freed. We were extremely nervous about the next corner to the helm station as this requires pulling the section off the back of the boat to gain access, which Rowan did with great difficulty in Rodney Bay. What a huge relief it was when it went through perfectly. We celebrated way to early as the last hurdle was to thread the damn halyard through the clutch which looks incredibly simple but took 3 hours to do! And only through brute strength from Rowan did it go through. What a steamy afternoon that was!

We finally picked up the anchor at 5:30pm, we had planned to go to Canuoan for the night to refuel and be a little closer to Grenada. There was no wind and by the time we got to Bequia the sun was setting and we decided to return to our tried and tested mooring ball at Daffodils. The good news is we managed to get onto the mooring ball all on our own, with picking up the ball at the helm. It worked like a dream, a relief after our frustrating day.

We went and ate at Daffodils, and we were rather stand offish to a very loud brash Canadian, who was obviously lonely. Luckily someone finally joined him and we had a peaceful rest of our meal. We booked with Daffodil to have our required Lateral flow test for Grenada, at 8am. She is running a sharp business.

Got back to PolePole and started watching Nomadland, which various people have recommended to us as we are such happy campervanners. We lasted about half an hour before we both nodded off, but great acting and characters, the little we saw.