Still the same-old same-old on the health front, but I’m a bit apprehensive as the antispasmodic pills run out today and while I can’t feel the infection being treated by the antibiotics, I can certainly feels those painful spasms and they are what are keeping me from sleeping. But I’ve got hours ahead of me and generally I feel better. I’ve recuperated enough to sit here aboard and do absolutely nothing worthwhile in the firm knowledge that I could do something if I wanted to and that using illness as an excuse would be exactly that. So now I ought to feel guilty about not working, but I don’t; which means I’m back to normal.
I have decided to start taking solid food again – it started with internet connectivity and a tasty sugar crêpe at Max’s Place ashore. Returning from getting a baguette at the bakery, I met a forlorn looking gent on the dock who explained that he thought his dinghy had been stolen, it was gone but the lock was still there.
I took him back to his boat, a Hylas 54 whose name didn’t escape me because the boat was newly painted and yet to have a name placed on it. I offered to take him around the shoreline to search, since theft during the day is quite rare in Grand Case (unlike other locations on the island). He said he’d scan the shoreline with binoculars from the boat first and I waited while he scanned and success, there on far shoreline of Grand Case was a dinghy on the beach. We motored over and it was indeed their dinghy! I recalled the time I’d thought my dinghy was stolen at the inside marina in Marigot, when the cause was just my bad knot tying. This was a case of the lock opening and letting the dinghy drift.
Today is Mardi Gras, so the usual Tuesday road festival here in Grand Case is going to be augmented by Carnival and I am going to go ashore and will brave the crowds. It will be a bit depressing to watch and not be able to participate and I hope I can resist the temptation of trying just one glass of wine. I think I’ll check the internet to see if literally one glass might be acceptable or if that is sufficient to cause problems with the antibiotic.
The pizza joint was closed, and it looks like that closure is permanent, so I wandered the streets and finally took the plunge and decided to get a real meal tonight, I chose L’escapade and had a simple rack of lamb meal accompanied by a fine, if young, 2013 Bâdoit water and capped off by an espresso. The meal was tasty and I finished most of it despite feeling quite full and I subsequently wandered the crowded streets. There was a record number of boats in the anchorage, many of which look like they are going to enter the Heineken Regatta since they are bareboat charters and crewed by at least 6 men (although some were flying strange rainbow-colored horizontally striped courtesy flags, which might mean that they aren’t racing). The streets of Grand Case were full as well but I couldn’t stay around long enough for the big procession to start so fought my way through the tangle of dinghies at the dock and returned to Zanshin. Once again, several dinghies tied up on the windward side of the dock without stern anchors and were pulled underneath the dinghy dock. There go their insurance deductibles! What I don’t understand is lack of understanding. As I was leaving a dinghy arrived with a sole person aboard and he threw out a stern anchor and while he was tying up another, fully laden, dinghy arrived and wanted to tie up as well. He warned them about using a stern anchor on that side and they hovered away from the dock, but as soon as he’d left the dock they docked there anyway, without a stern anchor. They must be feeling either lucky or just don’t care about damage, most likely the latter.
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