Anse Mittan (!4th – 21th Feb 17)
Back to being just us which feels a bit weird after nearly a fortnight of tagging on with the Garagnani family. First thing first, Ian is marched to the doctor’s surgery as soon as it opens. Even arriving at 8:30, there are 3 people in front of us and we had to wait for a good 2 hours before being seen by a charming doctor. Not wasted time for me though, the stack of out of date magazines get me up to date with the celeb or not so celeb goings on of the last few years. Sadly I realise that it won’t be long before I won’t be able to recognise anybody anymore!
The consultation with the doctor is very brief, a course of very strong antibiotic is prescribed and a long list of wound cleaning potions is to be used twice a day. Ian is quite excited by the iodine solution he will have to dab all over… Used to be a badge of honour as kids to be covered in the red solution. However, the doctor is a bit concerned with the state of the infection and he also prescribe some anticoagulant injections to be administered by a nurse every day for 6 days. So we are going to be stuck here for a week, could think of worth places to be stuck in. As it turns out and Ian is keen to do it himself, and the nurse is just as keen to show him how to self inject, so we only have to visit the surgery twice. Our forced inactivity enables us to have a good rest and catch up with domestic chores. Washing, cleaning, polishing, nothing too serious and boat maintenance does not feature at all. The afternoons are spent on the nearby beach where the hammock is slung between 2 coconut trees. Books are read and snoozettes are frequent, with ice cream thrown in, it really feels like a holiday. We go for short walks around the bay and finding the food shop wanting in the creole village, we take the dinghy back to l’Anse a l’Ane for a spot of shopping in the 8 a 8 which is fun.
Roy from Serenity is across Fort de France bay, in the Z’Abricot marina. Anne has gone back to Belgium for 3 weeks and he welcomes the opportunity to come and visit us on the Saturday. Roy being Roy, not for him the ferry across, far too easy, he take his dinghy, at 15 miles an hour, it took him 12 mn to be precise! We had a good day nattering about boats and experience since we last caught up in Prickly Bay, Grenada nearly a month ago.
We had planned to move to Fort de France in the middle of the following week, to ensure that we had some room before the carnival starts at the weekend. But the Monday brought with it a huge wind shift and not pleasant weather which had us up anchor in a hurry after trying to ride the storm out for a good hour. Some boats were on mooring buoys and we had to avoid them. It just was not nice and it got really nasty with wind up to 36 knots. Upping the anchor in such a wind was difficult and to add to our trouble the hooky part of our boat hook floated away as I was trying to pick up our anchor buoy. To add to the excitement, the dinghy which we did not have time to get back on board nearly floated off, luckily we had padlocked it for the night and Ian managed to retrieve the line after a bit of a struggle. The bay of Fort de France can be quite shallow in place and the anchorage at the foot of the fort would not be much more protected than where we just left, so we decided to join Roy at the marina (€11 per night bargain). This would also enable us to fuel up and water up.
We got to the marina just before dark and even there the wind and waves were being felt. I had never seen mats swinging so much. All you could hear was clanking all around. Quite scary really.
The next day we had the pleasant surprise to see Lynn and Peter (Christine) with friends arrive at the marina. We had a brilliant time catching up with news since we last saw them in Grenada. Roy had offered to cook us dinner so we had a great meal onboard Serenity.
It is now Thursday and we are keen to be in position in Fort de France for the carnival. The anchorage is quite busy but there is some room on the outer edge… the dinghy ride ashore is a good row which will keep me in shape. The wind is still quite strong and the ferries make such a wash every half hour and I am pleased that we will be spending most of our days ashore.