Despite the winds picking up and a couple of rain showers, the anchorage at Colombier remained well protected and calm and after breakfast in the morning I continued the task of sharpening my razors and kitchen knives, an annual or biannual chore. Stephen from Katzenellenbogen came over and asked about splicing 3-strand since he needed to make up two lines for the mooring balls. I said he should bring over the line and we’d do it aboard Zanshin and the used line he brought was just long enough to cut in half and splice an eye on each one. Since 3-strand can be spliced without tools (although using a fid makes life easier on some lines) we started with cutting and taping the ends and prepared to make the eyes. The only difficult or tricky part is getting the start right, and somehow I couldn’t get it going correctly while trying to explain, but once I shut up and just did it, it worked. Stephen completed that splice and also did the next line and the end result is very good looking indeed and well worth the effort spent.
Later on Philaine and Michaela (pronounced “Mikaela”) and I went on a walk along the windward side path but once we’d reached the end of the path and were on pavement we continued and walked past Flamands beach and thence up the hill. None of us had brought any money along, so stopping at the bakery or a small store for cold drinks was out of the question and I doubt that the Porsche Cayenne taxicab (remember, we’re on St. Barths) would have given us credit, and if he had, I’d probably have had to take out a loan on my boat to pay it off. We walked up and down and up and down the hills, planning on walking to the top of the road overlooking Anse Colombier and taking the footpath down from there. Just as we were having doubts about our plan we arrived at an intersection and the road leading up to the right was indeed marked with “Colombier” so we ended up completing much of a circumnavigation per pedes of the island. Although there are sidewalks in many places, we got a lot of looks from the cars and bikes zipping along the road and didn’t see any other pedestrians on our trip – it is that kind of an island.
Back aboard and after a cooling and soothing swim, I had a happy hour drink(s) and debated what I would cook for dinner, in the end I thawed out some ground beef and used a bit of Taco mix with some onions and fresh greens and melted cheese to make a kind of a burrito wrap which probably wasn’t very good but as I was very hungry from the walk it tasted just perfect.
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