Sainte-Anne

Left Trois Ilets first thing in the morning and had coffee and breakfast in route to La Marin and Sainte Anne, where we hope to get the AIS fixed and finally check into the country. We sailed, well motored, as the wind was on our nose the whole time so we would have had to tack back and forth to get there. Unfortunately, in order to tack you need to furl the jib or stay sail and let it out on the opposite side, not conducive to efficiency, so we took the lazy way. We left at 6:45 and arrived around 11am. There were sections that had lots of pots so I got to sit at the bow and direct Brian through the maze, as we stayed close to shore for most of the trip.
The anchorage is full, but we had no problem setting the anchor and are beside Kalunamoo (Bill and Maureen), former Salty Dawg who were also beside us in the south side of Portsmouth.
We quickly lowered the dingy and attached the engine, something I’ve been doing since Brian hurt his hand. We made rounds to say Hi to a few boats and then headed into La Marin. It took us about 45min and we didn’t follow the red and green so got ourselves into some pretty shallow water, where we had to back track. On the way back to the boat the engine died, but we restarted, then it died again about 15ft from the boat, so we had to row and then Brian spent some time fixing it (water in the fuel).
Earlier in the day we had a tiff as I was trying to clarify what Brian was asking me (about the water tank), he wasn’t understanding my words and then felt I got defensive when he went and showed me. Perhaps he was right. He is a very smart man and usually knows what the remaining of the sentence is, but often I am not looking to be right, just heard. This tension carried on throughout the day, getting shushed at immigration and ignored with regards to directions. When he is on a mission, my words seem to irritate. However, in the large scheme of things it is all minor and truly things that wouldn’t have bothered me before. I am either becoming more sensitive or I just care more about what Brian thinks of me, then others who have come before.
All was resolved by evening. We found the Garmin AIS800! His finger is healing well but it is giving him pause for thought. We had been moving toward keeping the boat in Curacao and then Panama and heading across the canal at Christmas. Now, he is talking about going to the DR and having me fly to Curacao from there, and he will make his way north again, perhaps to Canada.
Either way is fine with me.
We did not find the BBQ piece and Brian put out a message on the Salty Dawgs WhatsApp group looking for a Ventura (part that we need). Later he remembered that he had saved pieces from the old BBQ, and sure enough, he had a spare.
After super we watched another section of A Mid Summer Nights Dream in the pilot house (the Apple computer dropped but still seems ok)…and then off to bed. All in all, another beautiful day in the tropics ☀️🌴Lue lisää