Thursday 27 May 2010

Picton Castle at sea in the Caribbean Sea; Thursday 27 May 2010 בס"ד

Yesterday morning I got my 0400 wakeup from my hammock on the aloha deck to do my anchor night watch. Clark had offered to help me light the stove, which is what somebody does every night at 0430. However, we messed up a bit and I found out in the morning when I woke up that we had gotten soot all over midships and covered many hatch sleepers. Oops! I took the skiff in at 0800, and went with a few people to a beach bar called Roy's to use their wifi internet. I was there a bit and ended up having lunch there. Then leonard rented a car and he, Jimmy, Nadia, and I drove around the island and stopped at little shops. I bought Monopoly (so I can fulfill my dream of having a Captain Ron cash game), fruit punch-scented pine tree fresheners, a new pair of sandals, and a cheap backpack. We went to Shoal Bay where Leonard got a room, then came back to Roy's to see a sail get made for a Caricou sloop by some of our crew for a friend of the ship. However, the material was delayed so the event was postponed to this morning. I ate dinner at Roy's, then Tammy was kind enough to let me take a quick shower at her room at Broken ATM Hotel. It was already very late when I went back to Roy's a bit bummed at not having done anything of note, when Katie and Michael invited me to go hiking to a cool place to camp. I had my camping hammock, and so we climbed the jungley ridge to the scary construction house which is a massive concrete work site. We went up to the top floor, which had an amazing view considering it's probably the highest building on this side of the island, then went down the other jungley side of the ridge to a beach made of nothing but rocks and huge conch shells. There were only two trees anywhere on the beach, so I set my hammock up between them while Katie and Michael made camp on a huge piece of driftwood that was once a large portion of a boat's hull.

We woke up at 0745 and played some bocce ball with conch shells for a bit, then hiked along the beach, which turned into cliffs with narrow goat paths to the light house. From there we made our way up Spider Hill, which we so named because the dense brush housed massive Anguillan Death Spiders at every turn. They were all in large webs and had yellow Xs on their backsides, which probably meant they'd kill us. We made our way through to the dirt road which led back to the scary construction house, and then back down the ridge through the jungle to the regular road back to Roy's, where the sailmaking was going on. We had breakfast there, played some cards (a pinochle-like game called Eucher?), had lunch, and came back in the 1445 skiff. We set off at about 1700, bound for Panama, but we're motoring because of this tropical storm thing that is still throwing headwinds in our direction. We also received our Second Mate Paul Bracken today as well. I was in the chain locker flaking out the anchor chain as we hauled it in on the windlass, and got any and all the cleanliness I may or may not have attained ashore quickly replaced by massive amounts of oil, tar, and filth. It's good to be back.