Port Royal
Sarah Grace goes to sea
Chris Yerbury and Sophy White
Tue 28 Mar 2006 18:07
Walliliabou,(Port Royal:
for all those fans of 'Pirates of the Caribbean'), 27th March 2006. St Vincent
Island.
We are moored in this
strange bay, filled with film sets, all propped up with steel scaffolding.
It was great for the girls to look around the sets, complete with fake stone
bridges, jetties, and olde shops, already looking a bit weather worn and rickety
two years post-shoot. This was after Chris had had a big cup of tea
to help steady his pulse after more spectacular mooring hassles.
The pressure starts about a
mile out from the bay, with waiting speed boats, competing for the right to
charge you for handing you a mooring rope. Previously we have ended up
racing for the mooring, which we are perfectly capable of tying up to without
any help whatsoever. When we won one of these races,(surprisingly,
as Sarah Grace is not a very good speed boat), the pipped boat boy said
disparagingly, 'Mon, you are cheap!'. In many bays it is compulsory to
moor, as it is either two deep or there is a marine reserve, so incoming yachts
are like fish in a barrel for waiting boat boys.
Despite repeated
rejections, these guys trail you in in their boats, and then mill around the
mooring trying to hand you the rope. Yesterday, Chris lassoed one of them
in a speedboat with our big mooring rope, whilst ostensibly trying to catch
the mooring buoy. The hapless guy managed to escape, and we
eventually managed to pick up a line, not before another man in a canoe had
started trying to retie the mooring knot, and we were being bombarded by advice
about which ropes to use for a stern line etc. from two speedboats, hanging onto
the stern. This had the effect on Chris which I have only ever seen Mimi at her
worst achieve.
The floating vendors are
usually more benign, but more numerous. They arrive on floating apparatus
too precarious to be described as boats. Surfboards piled high with soggy
bananas, tiny fibreglass bathtubs filled with trinkets, or canoes filled with
mangoes and pawpaws all arrive with generally persistent and cheerful owners,
and keep your very busy seconds after you have managed to tie up. Hanging
fruit from the rigging is meant to give the signal that you don't need any more,
but this is also an invitation to fruit bats to have a go, as we have
discovered....
Here is a picture of the
girls asleep in the cockpit at dawn, with the Pirates of the Caribbean set in
the background.
Here is a picture of me
looking weatherbeaten!
Here is one of Otti looking
at the pitons of St Lucia, and another one of them as we sailed past
yesterday. Incidentally, now that we are sailing south east again,
the wind has swopped from north to south east......... So we had a pretty rough
day of it with a forty mile passage into the wind. Just think, I was
really looking forward to coming back south on a reach or run!
Here is a picture of all
the kids in St Pierre in Martinique, last week. We all really miss Freddy,
even though he has gone for only a few days.
