2023-06-10 Preparations and clearing out

Today I’ll be busy with travel preparations and clearing out. I woke up to cloudy skies this morning and will be heading ashore in a while. I need to wait for the stores open and the administration offices to open. I’ll be clearing out today and haven’t decided if my next destination is to be Dominica or Martinique. I really shouldn’t put clearing out as a big task, as it only takes about 5 minutes here in the French islands.

The dive gear is still set up on the dive platform. I’ll do one last dive to see if the camera sunk straight down. Plus one last pass at scraping the remaining growth on Zanshin‘s bottom. I just checked using Google and it seems that the GoPro 3 with housing will sink. Thus, there’s a good chance I’ll find it if I dive. Of course my last experience with retrieval wasn’t that successful, it took me a day to find my ladder in the BVI.

Morning

I just returned from a trip ashore for preparations and clearing out. I needed some cash and first visited the ATM at the ferry dock. My timing was bad, as a ferry had just arrived and there were a good 50 people lined up at the machine and I expected it to run out of cash before I got to the front of the line.I walked up the street to do my clearing out so that I could let the line shorten a bit. There were two Americans ahead of me who took forever to fill in their clearance for 3 people. They couldn’t be bothered about the people waiting behind them and instead of entering data discussed about spelling of foreign names and whether they should use uppercase or lowercase. When I printed out my form I asked the lady at the counter about ATMs and she told me where there was another, less publicly visible, one. I used that and completed my shopping for the trip. It didn’t take long to motor back to Zanshin.

Noon

Fortified with half a baguette and some sliced cheese, I’m ready to search for the GoPro and do a final cleaning pass on Zanshin. I just sealed the two Entrecôte cuts that I purchased at the store earlier into Foodsaver bags. I think I’ll sous-vide one today and finish it on the BBQ tonight.

I put the dive gear back together, noting I had only just over 1000PSI left in the tank. The first thing I did, after donning the BCD in the water, was to drop to the bottom underneath and behind Zanshin. At first I saw nothing, then swam about 30 feet over, as the wind had shifted a bit since yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised when I immediately found the GoPro, lying in the sea grass. I’d not expected to find it again. No only was the camera still dry inside the housing, but the batteries were full, too.

I thought I would just do a quick run up and down the bottom of the hull to clear away some spots I’d missed the previous day. But I found whole patches of untouched bottom growth that needed attention. And there was a crab the size of my fist in the bow thruster channel. He’s going to get a surprise when I fire up that baby for the first time; unless he departs when I get underway. I think I’ve finished my overall preparations and clearing out and am ready to go. I put in Dominica as my next port, since if I change my mind and head to Martinique they won’t care. The other way around could lead to complications.

Evening

I’ve had the entrecote bubbling away in the sous vide for a couple of hours now, and I’ll put some compound butter on the baguette bread and toast that to go along with the steak for dinner.I’ve got some rashes on my skin, which is getting itchy. I must have disturbed some new nasties during today’s dive.