Feb 10th Carriacou Hillsborough Bay

February 10^th Carriacou Hillsborough Bay
We are struggling with internet so please be patient…It is a struggle to get an article and photos uploaded at the same time.

The carnival festivities kept us awake for a little while but not too long, we were pretty tired. We had a good sleep but both woke quite early. The swim platform was covered in little bait fish, some alive some not. Robbie managed to save a few. They must have been being chased by something bigger, and they jump to escape – but unfortunately we were in the way.

The wind had changed direction and we were not happy with how close one of the old steel rust buckets was getting to us. Robbie was cleaning the engine room and I called him up and we decided to move around to the bottom of the island to Tyrell Bay. It also started showering rain and it was coming in the windows and port holes.

We departed our anchorage at Hillsborough for Tyrell Bay at 10.45am and arrived at 11.45am. As we entered the bay, there was a large oil slick, which we could smell and see the definite slick. We avoided that and came in on the South West side avoiding a large shoal on the very South side. We anchored twice before it held. There are a large number of Yachts anchored here, maybe about 100 or so.

The really horrible news is that today I had an email from Jennifer Hamilton, off Dirona (the Nordhavn 52’ that we just left in Barbados) and yesterday while standing on the dock a fender line snapped on the superyacht next to them, and it caught her and broke her collarbone. This is a real setback for them, it means she is almost immobilised and not able to do some of her work on the boat. It made me feel sick in the stomach as I recalled there was a young girl off a yacht who went to help a super yacht berth, one of the lines snapped, which whipped around and caught her in the head, and she was killed instantly. Just sickening. Jennifer (although very unlucky this happened) was very lucky indeed that the rope did not hit her in the face or head. Thank goodness, but still, a broken collar bone is still a serious injury which will be painful as well as a pain in the butt. Hopefully, as she is so fit and healthy, she will make a quick recovery.

 

 Robbie was intent on updating our Macbook Pro with the charts for the Caribbean and Eastern USA. We had earlier decided that our Furuno C-Maps and the Navionics on the IPad would be enough. We thought again and decided to buy the Coastal Explorer charts for the laptop. EASIER SAID THAN DONE! The easy part is purchasing the charts, then the fun begins!

Not sure if it is just us, but is always turns out to be a challenge. Firstly the internet is slow (to say the least), the charts wouldn’t load as the disk space was not enough. The Macbook Pro is paralled with windows 7 for the Coastal Explorer, however the coastal explorer suddenly was over the allocated disk space and wouldn’t download.

HELP! Call Sam he is our computer guru son and saviour but he is living it up in Gladstone and was playing the pokies! Not really, he now travels a lot for his job. We had a good chat anyway and he said we can call the same time tomorrow and then he will be home and able to remote access the laptop and fix our issues. In the mean time we decided to continue and try and sort it ourselves.

Looooooooooooooooong story short, it basically took us all day and at this point in time – at 8:00pm the Macbook is downloading and is at 42% complete. The backup laptop is another whole story and has a finger swipe for password which didn’t want to work. Robbie spent an hour or more trying to change the password, which of course he can’t remember and you need the old password to change the password!!! Shisen Housen this is getting VERY frustrating!

Around 3pm, we left the Macbook downloading at 2% and took the duck into shore as we were having a definite case of cabin fever by now. There was a very rickety pontoon or dinghy dock at one end of the bay where we tied and locked the duck up. There was a haul out facility which is very basic and certainly wouldn’t take our weight and a very small chandlery. The only thing we really needed was a courtesy flag – this is a small flag of the country you are in that you have to fly, higher than your boats registered country flag, as a courtesy while you are cruising in that country. Well they wanted $55 dollars! We normally pay around $10 -$15. We are only going to be here for another day or maybe two at the most. We left it on the shelf. Hopefully we can find a cheaper one somewhere else.

We walked along the beach, into the main street, where there were a few houses and 3 supermarkets (they are called supermarkets, but they are not supermarkets by our normal standards) they were a small shop and they have a lot of tinned or packaged goods that are dusty and faded, a lot of alcohol and all are expensive. The only fresh foods was onions and garlic and of course I didn’t need those. (Murphy’s law – if you needed it they wouldn’t have it!) A packet of Pringles is $10.90 or about $4 US dollars and they only had one flavour. I suppose if you were desperate for Pringles….

 We headed back to the boat walking along the road which was quite steep and our bodies felt it after the crossing we have not done much exercise. This is about to change! We had a good view over the anchorage and then had to walk down a bush track to get back to the dinghy dock. With the Zika Virus a concern we were conscious of Mosquitoes but the only thing we saw was a fat pig.

The other thing is that our fantastic little Nikon underwater camera has died, well almost. It will still take photos but the digital screen has gone all dark and splotchy and you can’t actually see what you are taking a photo of. We have a large Canon SLR but the Nikon takes much better photos, is a lot smaller and easier to cart around and of course the main benefit is it is waterproof. So if the photos from hereon in, are a bit strange you know why!

Luckily our good friends Paul and Maree are coming to stay at the end of the month and we were able to order one online which we will send to Jessie at work and she will give it to Paul and Maree to bring over for us. We are really looking forward to seeing them, they last visited us this time last year in Thailand.