As has become ritual, we had a late breakfast aboard, this time a simple bacon-and-eggs affair, and didn’t get going until shortly before 11:00AM. My plan was to drop Sascha and Sandra off at the PAYS dinghy dock so that they could take the car to the gas station next to the rental place while I zipped across the Portsmouth harbour in the dinghy but as we approached the dock we saw only 2 vehicles along the stretch of road where we’d left ours the night before and neither of them had the correct colour! Going ashore a quick search revealed that our car was indeed missing and I thought that there were only two options – that the rental company had repossessed the car for some reason or that some kids had decided to do some joy-riding; since professional car theft is probably nonexistent on the island. I thought about going to the police first to file a report but chose to head off to the rental agency first.
Our entrance to the Indian River was marked by one of the boat boys waving us off frantically and I turned the dinghy in time to meet a medium-sized wave but since he was still waving I realized that my approach into the narrow entrance was wrong and he waved us in from another angle. It turns out that Erika had washed out a channel in a straight line out from the river; the old 90° approach had silted in.
As I walked to the front door of the rental agency I was relieved, and somewhat angered, to see our car being washed in preparation for the next clients and was told that the manager had seen the car parked very far from the Purple Turtle entrance (the road had been full of vehicles when we’d arrived the day before) and decided it was unsafe there and drove it back to the agency.
After returning to Zanshin Sascha and I got our cleaning materials out and took the dinghy to the beach for a good scrubbing and treatment with Clorox, which instantly killed and dissolved the growths remaining after our efforts with sand and a pot scrubber.
We got the boat ready for passage and left shortly before 14:00 with a very light wind from the west; and I was worried that we’d have to motor much of the way in order to make it to the Saintes before sunset. But once we’d passed the lee of the island and had clean air we had a 15 knot easterly breeze which propelled us at 7-9 knots despite reefing and the seas were under 1 M so it was a great and relaxing sail that Sascha skippered the whole way. Even picking up a mooring ball in the Pain de Sucre anchorage was easy this time and we needed no outside assistance and managed to get it right the first time around. We had some white wine and the last Carib for happy, swum around a bit, paddle-boarded a bit more and then got dressed for dinner ashore at Le Bourg.
Dinner at Au Bon Vivre was fantastic, Sandra had duck, I had a rack of lamb and Sascha went for the filet mignon. Back on the boat we had a final glass of wine and when we headed below it was 23:00 – an absolute record for us.
