Today is another cloudy day in the Caribbean, one of the few such days and I feel a bit sorry for the visitors who only have a couple of days here and don’t get to see those typical sunny days with just a light cover of puffy cumulus clouds. I’m sure that there are many here on the island who are happy to have respite from the harsh sun so that their sunburns can heal a bit, so it isn’t all bad. I motored around the corner to Caneel Bay after my coffee so that I could have a short dinghy ride into town and do some provisioning. I picked up a mooring ball but the vertical line from the float down wrapped itself around my keel and the wind was against the current a bit so the problem didn’t solve itself. I was afraid to put the boat into gear because of the possibility of snagging a line, but used the bow thruster a bit to try to turn the boat around. Just as I was about to release the lines and let wind/current get me clear the line untangled from my keel and I was back in a normal mooring position.
I saw a very powerful signal from Caneel Bay and paid the $10 to get a day’s worth of internet, but the connection was the worst that I’ve ever had the misfortune to pay for. It took about a half hour to get 250Kb worth of e-mails, even longer to send replies, and I tried uploading my blog pages for 2 hours without any luck at all, the connection would either reset or time-out despite a 100% signal. Of course their billing page is blazingly fast but once you actually tried to do anything on the web speeds just died.
After getting some steaks and other supplies I returned to the boat and promptly left the Caneel Bay anchorage. The ferry and power traffic zipping along at flank speed just outside the anchorage makes for a very rolly location, and due to my sugar-scoop stern the wakes slam into Zanshin at times and the whole boat shakes and rolls; much more so than when sailing and slamming into waves from the front.
The monster porterhouse steak marinating in the fridge in preparation for dinner, I took a tour around the anchorage on the paddle board again and then attacked an important task – I’d purchased a beautiful Spanish-tip straight edge razor, handmade by Aust in Germany some time ago. Unfortunately the factory grind was terrible and I didn’t like using this full-sized razor; so today I used the 1000 grit stone to set a correct edge on the razor, then the 3000 and finally the 12000 to make it into a useful shaving device and I’ll give her a whirl tomorrow.
The rest of the day was spent just lounging on the paddle board streaming from the back of the boat, interrupted just once by a quick trip in the dinghy to help a fellow single-hander pick up a mooring. The BBQ steak was awesome and I ended up falling asleep in the cockpit and waking up at around midnight with a headache caused by a crick in my neck from the odd position I fell asleep in. I’m sure it’ll be gone by the time I wake up tomorrow.
 |  |  |  |