Barbados continued

February 3^rd: We woke up to the sound of something snorting in the water, and it was horses! There were a few horses and their riders and they were swimming the horses hard in the water in the anchorage around the boats. They looked to be in very good condition and we all wondered why they were swimming them (which they have since done every day) I think they are from a riding hire place and they take them for a swim in the mornings to expend some of the horses energy and beans so they won’t bolt with a customer on them. There are cruise ships in the harbour every day so the town is pretty busy most days with tourists, and it’s a beautiful beach to go horse riding, long and sandy.

The boys had hired a car yesterday which was very expensive, the most expensive we have paid in the world, so far. $722 Barbados dollars which is about $350 US Dollars and it was a bit of a bomb but we needed it.

We set off on an island tour armed with a map and first stopped further up at Payne’s Bay for a swim. The beaches are beautiful and the water lovely, clear and warm. We continued on and had lunch at Mullins Beach Bar, a beautiful restaurant set right on the beach with steps right down into the water.

We went looking for the rum distillery, which we found, but they do not conduct tours there, the tours are at the distillery back in Bridgetown. We continued on driving towards the other side of the Island and we were stopped by a large local guy called Andrew who invited himself to be our tour guide and jumped in the car with us and took us to see the local sights.

This was the best thing that could have happened, he showed us beautiful beaches, blow holes and sights that we would never have found otherwise. He was a real character and he called Robbie “Starboy”, he called Pete “Iceman” because he was so quiet and a bit cool! He called Heidi and I “Sweet thing”. He was a bit of a charmer and asked us to keep him in mind he would like to marry a lady from Australia or Germany! He actually made the day.

 

One of the places he took us to you could walk around the rocks to a private natural swimming pool, which the boys did, and Peter actually got caught by a big wave set that came in, Heidi and I were a bit worried for a while but he was OK.

We dropped Andrew off back at his pick-up corner, and continued on. The last beach we found was by far the best and there were only a couple of local guys fishing and another couple of swimmers. Perfect white sandy beach, rolling waves and clear water. We all had a bit of a swim but unfortunately Robbie caught a wave and lost his good sunglasses. I tried to help him find them for a while with no joy. There was a bit of an undertow under the waves. Robbie continued to look for them and about 15 minutes later he was successful! That was good as they are Spotters and quite expensive glasses.

It was getting late so we drove up to the top of the hill where there are 2 large deserted hotels or accommodations places overlooking the beautiful cove.

 

 

February 4^th: Peter and Heidi’s last day today, it is very sad. We have had such a great time with them. It is 2 days short of a month since they joined us, and they have to be home for Heidi’s birthday on the 6^th, then they go to Norway to see Per and Elisabeth, from Oda (our sailing buddies with Peter and Heidi, from NZ to Thailand)

Heidi and Peter were the perfect crew. Always ready to help with whatever needed doing. Heidi got stuck into cleaning the boat this morning and we did all the washing.

We were about to head into town for our Mount Gay rum distillery tour when Robbie noticed that a yachts tender was drifting past so he called out to Peter to go and rescue it in the duck. Which he did, but by the time he got to it, it was in the surf. Peter jumped into the water as our duck got caught in the surf and he had to push it out again.

We finally set off and arrived at the Rum distillery around 12 noon. We brought a t-shirt each and a bottle of rum, and had a rum punch while we waited for our 12.30 tour to start. I got a recipe card for the rum punch which has Angostura bitters in it. It is rather nice. By the time we had the first tastings done Heidi was a bit tipsy.

After the tour we found the local restaurant that had been recommended to us for lunch, it’s called “Brown Sugar” a local style restaurant. We had a very nice buffet lunch and a bottle of wine. This is our last meal with Peter and Heidi, we don’t know when we will see them again. We are talking about doing a scooter rally in India in 2017.

Heidi found a stall selling the Bob Marley hats that come with dreadlocks! We both brought one each for a laugh.

We dropped them at the airport and sadly said goodbye. We topped up our sim card with data at the airport garage and headed for Bridgetown to take the rental car back. Unfortunately the data on the phone wasn’t working so we couldn’t use google maps to find the car rental place, and Robbie couldn’t remember exactly where it was, so it took us about an hour of driving around in the dark, in the back streets of Bridgetown until we found it. We did stop at a garage and asked and their directions didn’t help at all.

Finally we got back to the boat, reheated the left over pizza from the other night and watched a movie. 

February 5^th: Robbie spent most of the day repairing the Stern Thruster. There was a lot of cussing and swearing, it’s located in the back of the Lazarette in a tight spot. I decided to wash the outside of the boat and keep busy. Because we are on anchor and not in a marina this means I am using our precious water supply, but the boat really needed it. I did pretty much the whole boat except for up the stack coz – I “don’t do heights”!!

We upped anchor and headed back up the coast to Port St Charles where we had arranged to meet James and Jennifer Hamilton, off the Nordhavn 52’ “Dirona”. We last saw them in the remote bottom of the South Island of New Zealand, almost 2 years ago. We had a bit of trouble anchoring, it was raining and just starting to get dark and it was hard to see where there was sand or coral. After a couple of goes the anchor took hold. Starlet had already got there before us. They picked us up in their duck and we went into the marina to Dirona.

It was great to see James and Jennifer again, and for Mark and Jennifer to meet them. We had a great catch up and sat in the cockpit of Dirona and enjoyed a few wines. The 52’ Nordhavn is basically the same design as our 47’, but they have an extended cockpit which is just fantastic! We would have preferred this model Nordhavn, but there were none on the market when we were ready to buy and it was a 2 year wait for a new model, which we didn’t want to do.

February 6^th: We had a very rocky roly night with wind gusting up to 30+ knots. Robbie got up very early and we had dragged anchor a little bit. We upped anchor and were going to move to a better position when the auto pilot went into alarm, the follow up lever was not responding. This is the steering. Of course the wind was blowing a gale and we were surrounded by yachts. Luckily the wind was blowing straight off the island and blowing us away from them. It only took Robbie 5 minutes to do a quick fix and we pulled up the anchor. Of course things never happen just one at a time, we had hooked a huge piece of coral that came up stuck on the anchor. Probably this is why we dragged. Eventually we got it off and were able to anchor further down a bit in a nice sandy area.

I had a quiet morning doing paper work and Robbie worked on the steering system and did a more permanent fix. He also made changes to the steering system in the fly bridge.
After lunch we got an email from Doug from Nordhavn, he had just finished interviewing James and Jennifer on Dirona and wanted to get some shots of Southern Star and Starlet. We went and picked him up and had a couple of hours on Starlet with him taking photos of all of us. He organised for a photo shoot of all 3 boats on Monday.

Mark and Jennifer invited James and Jennifer and ourselves for dinner on Starlet. We had a very enjoyable evening with all 3 couples exchanging adventures and experiences that we have had on our travels. Of course there was also some “technical Nordhavn” talk in there as well. Mark cooked Parmesan Mahi Mahi and it was the nicest way I have had it, I am hoping he will share his secret!