Our trip over was delayed as we waited for John Fallon of Stoppknot to pick up his last guest, clear customs, and fuel up. As this was just about the first time he has left the dock for about 2 years, nothing was simple for him. Even when he got to the fuel dock, it was empty, and he had to wait for a truck. The trip was lovely, with us arriving off St. Anne by 3:30 in the afternoon. We went to John's boat for drinks, then went to bed early.
Wednesday, we all got on Cat Tales, with two dinghies, and motored her into Le Marin, leaving StoppKnot at anchor. We cleared customs - always a simple process on the French islands, and proceeded to look through all the shops and chandleries. I got all the missing parts I needed, toilet seat hinges, toilet plunger gaskets, swim ladder steps, and Yanmar engine parts and spares. Dawn talked me into some LED lighting as well. We've been installing parts as needed as we've toured the island. We had a lovely lunch at Le Marin, dinghied over to the "LeaderPrice" grocery store, and stocked up on highly economical wine, beer, pate, bread, and cheeses. We even got a good rum agricole for 6 Euros - only good for "ti punch", but we like-em.
We moved to Grande Anse D'Arlet on Thursday morning, spent most of the day on the beach in a cafe, lounging around with lunch, beer and wine, went for a short hike, snorkelled just beside the boat, drank some wine with some sundown hors-d-ouvres, and went to bed early to read - all very hedonistic; and left there just at 09:00 this morning. One amazing bloggable event, is the arrival of 24+ hours of dust out of a clear blue sky. It is obviously Sahara dust, and the boat is absolutly crappy. The brown dust shows up, sticks to the salt, then the dew makes mud all over the boat. Every footstep is obvious. The grit is on the tables and in the beds. The hell here never ends, but we're hopeful that the dust storm is almost over. Also interesting, is that we haven't had a rain since Lorna and Brian's visit. Certainly, the islands are missing the moisture.
The beer is gone, so we'll dinghy in and hit the tourist traps.
