The last two days in Port Louis Marina are spent cleaning up and sorting the boat out ready for moving into the bay. The internet is excellent and we have water on tap which is handy to clean properly. Ian’s skin condition is also getting better. I guess having 2 showers a day has helped with clearing it up. We have decided to stay in St George’s bay for a few days before moving back to Prickly bay. It is so near the town and we have still a few things to do. Thursday we move to St George’s bay. It is a huge bay with fabulous views on St George’s town and hills as well as the main dock for commercial vessels. We are just outside the channel where the holding is best. You can anchor nearer to Grand Anse’s bay the bottom is not so secure there.
There is a tropical storm forecasted but we should be well out of it, it should be hitting in the north towards Martinique, so we should be safe. And we were safe, the wind did not pick up, quite the contrary, but we had a full day of rain and a very heavy swell. Given that we were not so sure of the holding and that there are many boats in the bay, we decided to ride this on board. It was probably the worth swell we had so far in our travels. Not very pleasant but is soon passed.
We run all our errands on Saturday, the town is very busy and the market is full of vendors, mainly on the streets though. I guess the fees to be in the market itself are too high for people, most of the stalls are empty, but every pavement around the market, and shops doorways are jam- packed with people selling everything you can think of, from fruits and vegetables to sunglasses and underwear. The tourist market with it’s array of crafts, spices, hats and tee-shirts is by comparison deserted, low season. I found a dress maker by the market place, she did laugh when she saw the material i brought, and laugh even more when I mentioned that I was looking for mirrors to attach to the dress. She probably thought it incongruous to want to be dressed up as a Short Knees… bet she had a good laugh when she got home! Spent a bit of time on a wild goose chase, trying to find these mirrors… on the plus side this gave us the opportunity to explore the town; we were sent from one end to the other looking for the shop that sold them. Unfortunately we could find no one selling them. We also checked on Ian’s tablet, sounds like they have not looked at it so far. We’ll have to come back next week. We’re too late for the fish market, it shuts at 1pm on Saturday, shame we were looking forward to a nice piece of tuna. So we cross the road and go the meat market instead. Not much choice but the meat on display looks fresh in spite of lack of refrigeration. We got talked into pork chops, extremely good value. It is so hot that we can only settle with a book on deck for the rest of the afternoon. We need to rest, there have been some vague announcement on the local radio that there might be a steel band parade tonight around 6pm.