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| L'olonnois at Carlisle bay, peaceful as I said! |
On Wednesday we went around the island using public transport, i.e. mini-vans stopping wherever, whenever, just make a sign to get-in and shout "bus stop" to get-off. We started with the highly recommended (in our French guide book) English harbour. A nice place indeed, built by the English navy between 1725 and 1746 and abandoned in 1889. The buildings have now been restored and are used as hotels, restaurants, pubs, museum, bakery... and even a yacht renting company and a sail-maker. There is a tranquillity feeling emerging from this place and one may spot easily the "English touch". The grass is perfectly cut and everything very well maintained. Huge difference with the small village in Carlisle bay where the houses are made of wood and encircled by a garden of old and rusted stuff. The most popular thing to keep in its garden seems to be old cars, rusted, missing wheels or other essential parts and then completely unusable.
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| The most interesting restored building at English Harbour |
After English Harbour, we headed towards St John's, the capital city of Antigua. Except a colourful fruit and vegetable market, St John's is really of no interest. Common stopover for cruise ships, the town is crowed with tourists and denatured by "Chinese shops", the same we've been seeing since Spain, i.e. small shops selling any kind of goods of bad quality and at low prices. The highlight of St John's visit was the lunch we ate in a small local restaurant: Pork stew for Thomas and curried chicken for me, delicious! Loaded with fruits and vegetables mainly grown in the island, we headed back to the boat for a calm evening around a glass of "planteur" and a beautiful sunset.
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| Big contrasts between the local fisherman and the cruise ships at St John's |
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| Working on the anchor of a cruise ship |
Yesterday and today were a lot less entertaining. The maintenance list had grown quite a bit and it was time to take care of it. After two full days of work, the list is almost finished, I am actually quite proud of us!
Here is what we have achieved in the last 48 hours:
- Check the rudder system, the reparation on the sector and the actuator of the auto-pilot.
- Find the leak on the bathroom sink. Unfortunately impossible to repair without changing the tap.
- Lubricate the stop-throttle of the engine.
- Change the defective door latch of the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen
- Install SOLAS light-reflective bands we bought in La Martinique so that l'Olonnois could be better seen at night.
- Change the ropes of the fenders and the ones used to hoist the dinghy above the skirt of the boat while sailing.
- Tidy up and clean the cockpit.
- Check mast and rigging.
- Dismantle the genoa-sheets blocking system and change the sheaves that were cracked and weaken.
- Try to hoist the Yankee (one relatively small front-sail we have not been using yet) on the baby-stay and see if we can use it as a tack-sail bigger than the stay-sail.
- Install blockers on the spinnaker sheets so they wouldn't get stuck in the spinnaker boom while trying to take the sail down.
- Repair a hole in the floor of the dinghy.
- Inspect the mainsail boom and the fastening point to as mast as well as the fastening point of the sheet.
- Repair the multiple small holes in the stay-sail.
- Repair the blue cushion we use outside that is unstitched at several places.
- Lubricate the support system of the bed lights in the back cabin.
- Do the laundry (by hand!).
- Fix the rudder that is "pumping" in the waves making a very depleasant BANG-noise each time.Thomas has then (one more time!) spent several hours under water making holes with a hand-driven drill through the rudder and its support structure in order to avoid any movement between the 2 parts.
- Do the check-out in Jolly harbour together with one last grocery shopping before we leave
- Re-fasten the stopper of the genoa furler-line, which got slightly loose.
... quite a list as you can see! But l'Olonnois is now back in the best shape and we are ready to leave for the last island of the Caribbean that we are going to visit: the half french/half dutch island of St Martin. Departure is planned for tomorrow in the afternoon and we should be in St Martin at about the same time on Sunday.
Have a nice week-end everybody!
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