After the big and heavy meal of the previous evening coupled with a bit of liquor, I had a deep sleep and awoke early. I made a nice Lungo sized Nespresso coffee, climbed up into the cockpit to imbibe it and began the laborious process of deciding what to do. It is so easy, when in a paradisiacal location, to become complacent and just let the days slide by one by one and I had to give myself a mental pinch to get out of the cycle – so I started getting the boat ready for travel and was soon ready to go; although I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to go. After firing up the engine and letting it warm up I decided to dive “The Tugboat” at Île Tintamarre and then see if I was going to spend the night at a mooring ball there or perhaps continue in the direction of St. Barths.
As there was no wind at all I motored at 1500RPM and approximately 6 knot to the anchorage of Tintamarre. There were several mooring balls available when I arrived, but a day-trip catamaran had disgorged swimmers who were blocking easy access to all but one ball. I’d forgotten that the French system, unlike the BVI one, doesn’t have longer pennants and one needs to take care in getting the moorings as they have very little “give”. It turned out that with 0 swell and 0 wind picking a up the mooring ball was quite easy and soon after getting tethered I had the dinghy garage open and was preparing the diving equipment and loading it into the dinghy. The last part was the camera assembly and putting on the wet suit. I’d cut my toenails and learned my lesson to not leave any sharp edges as they catch in the wet suit when attempting to don it!
The water was as clear as I’d ever experienced there and despite the cloud cover and impending rain I knew that the dive would not only be fun but would also deliver some nice pictures, assuming that I hadn’t messed up the camera settings again. I enjoyed the solitude of the dive along with the wonderfully calm and clear waters and upon returning to the boat spent an hour uploading and culling the 120 pictures I took down to a more manageable number of photos for this daily web blog page.
After that work I decided to head off to Île Fourchue so that I could do a morning dive and then continue on to St. Barths in time to clear in at Gustavia on Saturday before the Capitainerie closes for the weekend. There was little wind so I motored at 1500RPM again, and about halfway the wind picked up a little so I put out the genoa in order to pick up another half knot of groundspeed for the 10 mile trip. At Île Fourchue all the mooring balls were taken so I anchored in about 25 feet of water with 100 feet of chain – which should be sufficient considering the expected weather has light winds (0 – 5 knots, maximum).
I showered before lighting the BBQ for the Chorizo sausages that I’d thawed out during the crossing from Île Tintamarre; this turned out to have been a mistake, as I had problems lighting the flame and when the BBQ finally fired up it also took my eyebrows with it and the smell of burned hair is noxious, so I had another opportunity to shower before eating dinner in the cockpit.
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