Monday, February 14, 2011
Instead of weighing anchor and motoring to Gustavia I made sure I had my oars, half a tank of gas and a handheld VHF on board the dinghy and set off for town on my trusty Caribe dinghy. Despite hitting some waves quite hard I made it to town dry and cleared in – this time it was fast, as soon as I’d typed in the name of the boat the system filled in all the other details and all I needed to do was type in my previous port and intended next port and then my name and it, again, completed the rest of the details and numbers and I was in and out of the office within 5 minutes despite all 4 terminals being in use; one opened up as I entered and the other 3 were occupied by captains of large vessels with lots of crew data to enter. I went to the same café where Rob had negotiated a mortgage to pay for the bill and was fortunate that I’d been to a cash machine before my visit and had enough hard currency along without having to leave my boat papers as surety for the 2 coffees and raisin bread (the Wi-Fi was included in the package price). As befitting the price, the quality was excellent and from my seat in the corner I watched the traffic go by – both the vehicles and the pedestrian. St. Barths is the only place in the Caribbean where most of the passers-by were wearing clothing more valuable than all my T-Shirts aboard and where the women really did dress up to walk along the boulevard in the daytime heat. I did go overboard while shopping, as I went in there hungry and immediately made a beeline for the cheese counter where I did a roundabout sampler of many different cheeses and a large baguette; then I got some Carib beer and other necessary groceries and was glad that the credit line on my credit card was sufficiently deep; I’ll have to pay that grocery trip off in small flex-pay instalments. Back on the boat I got a visit from a British couple who are looking for a boat to purchase and were interested in looking at Zanshin I. Fortunately I’d done a bit of cleaning and the boat was presentable. I’m not sure if they remain interested, but we’ll go on a sail tomorrow – with my luck all sorts of bits and bobs will fall off, fail to function, or break during this demonstration ride.
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