Le Marin 19th may
Next morning I am up at 6 am, woken up by the rain. I slipped out with my camera for a quick explore around the bay of St Luce. Leaden skies make for dramatic scenery. By the time I get back, it is time to be driven back to the boat yard. We are there around 8am and the wait starts. It is 9 when Franck turns up at his office, when asked how he was, he replies he was ok until he saw us standing there in his office! Nice… he is still not admitting that it was done wrong, I am trying to keep my cool and just point out that we need to get passport and boat papers back and the bill will need to be settled. I am assuming that if he comes to the office with us he will pay the bill and if he does not I can really go to town on him , nearly hoping that he won’t pay, so he can experience one of my blow ups. As it turns out, without a word of apology for the inconvenience caused, he settled the bill and we get Ian’s passport back. The whole of the yard knows about the show down this morning and I am given the thumbs up all the way back when everyone learns that he finally coughed up. Never trust a little man wearing yellow Crocs!
A whole lot happier, we move into the bay back to the anchorage. We still have a few bits to do before we can move on and Lynn and Peter will be there too for 2 days. We intend to make the most of them as we’ll probably not see them for 6 months when they return in November. The boat will be lying up in Antigua for the hurricane season whilst they go back to the UK for the summer.
My hair is in a mess, all curly and long, Lynn had cut it for me back in January in Grenada, no one has touched since. She make a fabulous job of it yet again, the pixie look is brilliant, love it. We have our last supper, farewell dinner on the 20th May but as they decide to stay another day, we do it again the next evening, just because we can. They have been great fun and so supportive, it is so sad to see them go the next day. It’s becoming a bit of a habit to wave them off.
Another stroke of bad luck, the wind generator has stopped working, Ian investigate and find that the fault lies in the controller, which is not good news. We rang Rutland and it looks like the controller will need to be returned to the factory. Fortunately, they have a representative in St Lucia at the moment and he has a new controller he could let us have. The equipment is still under warranty so this should be a straight swap. Although we have been happy with the wind generator, good output and very silent and efficient, it is the second time the controller packs up (we had to return it from Spain last summer), hopefully this one will last us for a while. All we need to do is to get to St Lucia before the guy leaves. Lucky we have installed the 2 solar panels and they are actually generating electricity.
After over 10 days of hard boat graft, probably suffering from cabin fever, we decide to get out for a walk. We get a bit lost and end up in someone’s garden. As per usual, we have a nice chat and we leave with a bag full of mangoes we have picked up in their garden. Lovely man. There is a view point that gives you a 360 degree vista on the south of Martinique and the bay of Le Marin. The climb is hard but well worth the effort although the 4 euros each entrance charge to the top of the hill and nothing else is steeper than the hill itself. Still we get our money’s worth by staying over an hour there having a picnic and watching the changing light on the bay. Despite the “brume de sable” which blurs St Lucia, it is plenty picturesque! It was nice to be out doing something else for the day.