Despite going to bed at 8pm I am still not a morning person, 12 hours sleep is typical for me now and I love the fact that I feel no guilt for doing this. Dylan rises early and potters about the boat trying to make minimal noise until I rise from my slumber. The cruiser's net goes on every morning at 7:30am apart from Sunday. The net tells us the weather forecast and we listen out for any activities that we may want to get involved in.
After the net has finished we get up and do a couple of hours of chores whilst the sun is still low in the sky. There is never a set routine for chores but there is always something to do on the boat. For example this morning we battened the mainsail and put in the reefing lines – having put the mainsail on whilst in the yard we realised after flaking that we had left out the reefing lines and the first batten. Other chores this morning included resetting the leather anti chafe device on anchor snubber, fixing outboard davit as it had a faulty block, cleaned the head and washed the dishes.
Washing the dishes is a major chore in itself. Watching our fresh water consumption onboard is one of Dylan's favourite pastimes. To fill the tanks we need to dinghy ashore with jerry cans and fill them up one by one as well as pay for the pleasure. With that being a pain in the a** we try and use sea water when possible. To wash the dishes we put a bucket over the side and collect the sea water. Next step is to soak the dishes and wash them in the sea water in the cockpit prior to placing them all in the sink in the galley. I then fill the sink with an inch of fresh water and rinse them off, putting them one by one on top of a tea towel. We have no drying rack so I can only rinse a couple of dishes at a time before I need to put them away making room for more dishes to come out of the sink.
Chores completed we usually reward ourselves with a couple of hours of sunshine reading the kindle, using the laptop, reading the local newspaper or reading the cruising guide to work on our upcoming passage plan.
When the midday sun arrives, we escape to indoors and make our breakfast /lunch. With the climate so hot and humid here, we eat very little as our appetite has almost vanished. This meal usually consists of fruit (oranges or mangoes) and a sandwich or pasta. Throughout the day we have dinghies visiting from other boats to say hi or invite us to drinks that evening or the next. It really is a social lifestyle and a knock on the hull indicates a fellow cruiser wanting to have a chat.
Around 2ish we usually take the dinghy ashore and catch a bus into either Grand Anse (beach and grocery shopping) or St George (market and sightseeing). A hardy big bag accompanies us as it is a lot easier to haul our groceries into the dinghy with a strong Samsonite bag than it is carrier bags!(courtesy of Doug And Sarah – we would not have bought a Samsonite bag for groceries!) Being so used to walking around in bare feet, we have forgotten our shoes on a couple of occasions and got no further than de Big Fish bar, enjoying a cold beer in the heat with our bare feet on their exposed floorboards looking like true 'yachties'.
One of the best parts of the trip ashore for me is the dinghy ride. Two people being powered by a 10HP outboard makes for an exciting ride where we plane, hair streaming away from my face with no splash to soak my clothes. Dylan insisted that I learnt how to use it the other day. In his usual fashion we were at a busy dinghy dock with people mulling around and he told me we weren't going anywhere unless I moved the dinghy. Being an independent woman, I certainly wasn't going to back down so I figured out how to put the wrist strap on the kill switch and set about trying to start it up. Well Dylan certainly makes it look easy, I had to use both hands and stand up in order to kick start the engine! Pride still intact I then tried to get my head around the steering rod / throttle which behaves the same as a tiller, this is where I went a little wrong....ramming the dock by mistaking reverse for forward. Giggles all round I managed to navigate us out of the dock and we zig zagged our way back to the boat. Although fun to do, I much prefer being the passenger!
Back to our typical day...once returning from our trip ashore hot and sweaty, we usually go for a snorkel. The spots around here aren't the best as the water is murky but we do see coral, sea urchins and colourful fish. Taking advantage of being in the water with our snorkelling gear we often clean any growth on the hull of our boat too.
Out of the water we then start the process of showering. We do have 2 showers on board – one in the head and one in the cockpit. However as mentioned earlier, we are tight on our fresh water usage so try not to use them. The process starts by hauling out a bucket of sea water from over the side. Already wet from the snorkel, we lather up as best we can with soap and shampoo then rinse off with the bucket of sea water. This is done naked, sitting in the cockpit. As we have weather cloths in the cockpit (canvas that blocks the view from chest down) we have relatively good privacy from other yachts, however any swells that come by would probably provide our neighbours with a good eyeful! Once rinsed off, we treat ourselves to some fresh water out of the solar shower (thanks Nicholas) that we tie to the bimini, this gets the salt out of my hair that left in turns my hair to straw.
By this time it is about 4pm and we start to plan what we are doing in the evening. Most days we finds ourselves at drinks on other people's boats in the bay. 'Sundowner' parties start around 5:30pm and involve a lot of rum and snacks. Being out on the anchor, the gusts of wind keep mosquitos at bay so we can enjoy watching the sun set with a glass in our hand and not be eaten alive. Getting back into the dinghy after copious amounts of drinks is always fun and so far neither of us have fallen in....
Getting back to our boat about 8pm we go to the loo and then to bed. Going to the loo is exercise in itself. Once you have done your 'business' the pump needs to be pumped about 30 times. Being an old boat, the pump is quite stiff and by the end of this trip I am going to have biceps the size of Popeye's!
We sleep up forward in the v berth with the hatch open (unless it is raining) and look straight up at the stars. With the gentle swell rocking us back and forth we are over looked by The Hunter and other constellations and fall into a peaceful slumber.
No comments:
Post a Comment