Friday, December 17, 2010
While the night was still a bit rolly at anchor, it was quite a bit better than the previous ones, so I got a good night’s sleep. Getting from the boat to the dock was a bit of a chore, as my outboard has been acting up and would start, but as soon as I gave it a bit of gas it would die on me. Luckily I was still attached to the boat while working on it, otherwise I would have drifted off quite a ways (luckily just through the anchorage and not towards the rocks). Therefore it was serendipitous that I had found a used Caribe dinghy with a 18HP Tohatsu engine the day before and I have to admit that it was a lot of fun to go really fast in a dinghy without getting wet; those hard-bottom dinghies are a completely different class to the roll-up soft-floor Lodestar that I had used to date. Friends of mine on a Jeanneau 43DS called Pinta had e-mailed me that they were in the lagoon, so I dropped by on one of my quick zips around in the new dinghy and said hello for a while. It was nice to see them, talk a bit in German, and be aboard a 43DS again. They told me about the Air France airbus taking off right over the boat, so I had the camera out in preparation. The aeroplane didn’t show, and after it was a half hour late and another (much smaller) jet had taken off in the opposite direction I put the camera in it’s special water protective enclosure, a 1-gallon zip-lock baggie, and that had been stowed in the backpack when, with a huge roar, the jet passed overhead. All I can say is “timing”. It would have been a great shot. I just returned from a nice dinner (Pizza, but French style) and there is a local celebration going on ashore and I recognized one of the songs from my childhood, “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” being played ashore, despite the rhythm coming from steel drums and congas and other nontraditional instruments!
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |