Deeming Skipper's birthday as auspicious for the start of southern progress, and having provisioned, watered and fuelled up, we set off round the corner to St. Anne's bay again. Such a charming spot,
and there is the wonderful patisserie, and the clearing out process would be so much more pleasant there… only to discover the following morning that Snack Boubou (doubling as the clearing office) is closed on Wednesdays. So… another day in paradise, to coin a phrase; such hardship.
4 March: waved goodbye early to Martinique and its Diamond Rock (at extreme left of photo below), commissioned by the British as a ‘ship’ to guard the island against marauding French, who were determined to win it back in the end (which they did). After all, Martinique was the birth place of Napoleon’s Empress Josephine.
Great excitement mid-morning when the fishing line went taut: a catch, a catch!
It was a Great Barracuda, weighing 2-3 kg, with extremely sharp teeth! Delicious eating and enough for a couple of days … Sailed right past Rodney Bay on St. Lucia, not wishing to repeat the awful clearing-in procedure (see previous post) and anchored in lovely Marigot Bay instead, where we could clear in and out in one go and at no charge! See our boat anchored outside the lagoon below, and some of the opulent craft that ply these waters
6 March: 06:30 weighed anchor and set sail, past the beautiful Pitons, for the 40-mile passage to the next island south, St. Vincent. Although Customs and Immigration are in Chateaubelair, it was Sunday ($$$) so we decided to sail past a couple of miles to Cumberland Bay and ‘clear in’ the following day. Cumberland Bay is beautiful
but the beach shelves away steeply, so it was necessary to anchor stern to the shore and take a line from the stern and tie it to a palm tree.
Very helpful William, a local, assisted us with this so we promised to dine at ‘his’ restaurant (see below - which turned out to belong to Joseph, but William helped with the cooking) the following night. An excellent meal was had of barbecued fish, fried plantain, macaroni cheese, potato and salad all washed down with a couple of rum punches. Simple!
The only way to get back to Chateaubelair from Cumberland was by local bus, more accurately minibus, of which there are many ferrying locals on the one main road north and south between Kingstown and Chateaubelair. William had assured us that there would be many passing by Cumberland Bay on Monday morning. What he didn't say was that they would all be full! One hour later standing in the hot sun, and six having passed us, we eventually squeezed into the seventh. It was a 30-minute ride to remember, taken at breakneck speed on a narrow, winding, cliff-top, single carriageway road with no barrier between the road and the precipitous drop to the sea far below, screeching to a halt every now and then to pick up or drop off passengers. Needless to say, the brakes, tyres and shock absorbers were tested to the extreme. We had to hope they had all been serviced recently. And we enjoyed this ride for the princely sum of 2 EC$ (~50p).
Arriving in Chateaubelair at 10:30 on Monday morning, imagine our dismay on learning that the Customs officer had left early for some business in Kingstown, so the office was closed. When would he be back? After 4p.m. came the reply from helpful policeman who also acted as Immigration officer, and of course immigration could not be completed until after customs had been cleared. So waited for another ‘bus’ to take us back to Cumberland - nothing else in Chateaubelair to divert us - but this time their being full (at least 4 passed us by) played into our hands as a local man suddenly approached us to say Customs man was back, unexpectedly early! Cut a long story short, formalities were completed, eventually got another hair-raising ride back to Cumberland and a quiet afternoon was spent swimming and recovering. Phew!
Original plan was to call in next to Wallilabou, where Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed, on our way southwards. However we heard that a chartered catamaran had been boarded there during the previous Thursday night and a German yachtsman shot. Preferring not to take the risk, we continued past to Blue Lagoon at the southern tip of the island, deemed to be safe for visiting yachtsmen. Took the opportunity to take a taxi into Kingstown (could not endure another one of those bus rides). With its opulent government buildings, cobbled streets and colonnades in the old centre, it had an air of faded glory, sadly not sustained as one walked out from the centre.
‘Little Tokyo’, the fish market built with Japanese money, was fascinating though. Such variety and profusion of fish! As the Marlin steaks were too big for us
we bought 8 balahoo, small fish with 6-7 cm long razor sharp points on their noses. Tasty but a bit of a pain to prepare.
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