7am Saturday June 11, 2011
Yesterday was a great day for doing a circumnavigation of the island. Heavily armed with food, a jet boil, Cliff bars and water we headed out to engage a mighty Oleander scooter. Hmmm. We were a little skeptical at first by the plume of smoke upon ignition. But the salesman assured us everything was fine as it was a 2 stroke. Even my old Johnson doesn’t smoke that much! After a few training laps around the compound we headed off to the south shore. The mission: to make it all the way to the dockyard, catch a ferry to Hamilton, stop in to customs for Christian (my scooter companion), then hit the Goslings store and zoom our way home for dinner.
Perfect plan… excellent execution. Until the first hill! We thought we were going to have to get off and push! Poor thing! Our little scooter tried her best for sure, but the old gal just doesn’t have much life left in her. We made it up the hill and the next and the next, but not without a lot of patience.
We toured our way around the island zooming past cyclists with great enthusiasm. Stopped for lunch in a nice little pub and hooked up the sat phone. Seems the sat phone had been taking lessons from the scooter… Eventually we got a signal and in turn, confirmation that the spinnakers had shipped for delivery to the mega yacht on Tuesday.
We made our way to the dockyards and caught the ferry over to Hamilton. Walked smartly up to customs for Christian to declare his boat would have a babysitter (me) for the days before his crew arrives. Christian is flying home tomorrow. When they asked for his paperwork, we said they just told us to come here. Fortunately the customs officer took pitty on us as he thought we needed some mental support for sailing single handed all the way here. He organized the paperwork.
One boat sorted and we were off to the supermarket, the Goslings store and home. Loaded with about 50lbs of food and drink we ooched our way up the last hill and coasted into the club. Armed with a bottle of Goslings, a can or two of ginger beer and sausages and burgers we finished off the night with a BBQ.
Oh yeah… still have some splicing to do and a mast to climb! Tomorrow 😉
Keep safe everyone
Diane
June 11th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
So what you’re saying is a Rum Front camethrough.