2013-04-16

I’d arranged with Alexis to join an Indian River tour, so he picked me up in the early hours of the morning, at 8AM, and I joined 2 Canadian gentlemen for another tour of the river. They were on a 36 foot Bénéteau and heading down-island toward Cartagena and this would be their only day on the island before continuing south.
The tour was very nice, we were the second boat in and all the crabs on the shore were still out and about, unlike the previous trip where they’d already retired for the day. We had a fresh juice at the bar at the end of the road and Alexis informed us that the river would be closed because they were going to do some filming that day, he was going to see if he would find work and we joked that he was going to be “discovered” by the film industry and have to give up his day job!
Back on the boat I got my dive gear together and used the last 1500PSI in my tank to start work on cleaning the hull. There was almost no wind and little current, so cleaning was made a lot easier as I didn’t have to continually chase the boat as it swung at anchor. The first pass was with my industrial-sized scraper and that took care of most of the nasty sharp stuff and even more disgusting green fuzz. At times I couldn’t see anything as the water was so cloudy but then the boat swung a bit and I could scrape another pass and see the detritus float away – hopefully making a good meal for something downstream. After the rough work I was going to give the hull a pass with the Scotch pad, but only had enough air (and energy) for the propeller assembly and rudder and part of the keel so I’ll have to do one more dive before the hull is once again, albeit temporarily, no longer a lush forest but a barren desert.
I’d arranged to meet Alexis ashore to talk about taking two guests at a local hotel to the Îles des Saintes and we had no success in meeting up with them, but did have a tasty pizza for dinner at a place run by one of his cousins.