Kind of intermediate update thingy

Just to keep youse all in the picture.

Still living on boat here in Rodney Bay. I've now become one of those sad inmates you see skulking around marinas looking for scraps in skips and making awnings out of used bin bags. My hair is long and weedy and I sport rasta beads at both neck and wrist. I'm at knuckle-touching (='respect man'!) levels of familiarity with every other hairy shyster that geezers his way around this port, and there's quite a few of them I can tell you.

There's a totally naked and very black man who sits outside the local hardware shop gazing blankly into the future. He dribbles and mutters noiselessly shaking his head. He was quite a good plasterer and then 'something happened' they say. I can tell you he's now my best mate. Thats how long I've been here.

I do jobs on t'boat like splicing stuff and sorting ropes, and ferreting in the bilges for things that don't work. Today I counted all the ropes out and then counted them all back in again. The dinghy has to be pumped out every 5 minutes AND I have to talk and be nice to passing Germans......and even worse, passing Canadians, I ask you, of whom there are many.
Also I have to make lists of jobs, Lots and lots of lists. And then I have to prioritise the jobs, or at least the lists anyway.

There's a man that comes past every morning in a gaily painted sort of rafty dugouty type of thing covered in dirty flags of all nations. He shouts, bellows even, and uses a WW2 air hooter to announce his presence. His job is to flog you FROOT. He has a pile of last weeks supermarket cast off mungos or wangos or whatever kind of flipperty jibbet green mouldy roundy shapes that tourists are meant to haggle for. I still don't know the difference between a mango and a pineapple, well not his ones anyway because his stuff all looks the same.

On Saturday, a Rasta man with green and red shoes (that is one of each), a frequent enjoyer of ganga inhalation, and with many dreads, persuaded me to part with many Obama dollars in return for smearing my boat lavishly with car polish. I suppose the boat now looks more interesting so I paid him anyway. I noted in passing that he had a curious singing voice, somewhat higher than those of the well known Gibbs brothers.  

Yesterday being Sunday I took a day off and proceeded by rubber dubby to the nearby settlement where there is a little sailing club. A good lunch and several beers later saw me, rather uncharacteristically on the beach, in company with other persons who may or may not have been inebriated. One elderly skinny lady, probably american, stood in the sea holding a cocktail shaker full of rum high above the waves and talking gibberish non-stop all afternoon. The only break she took was when seeing that I and my nearest neighbour, lying peacefully in the sand,  were in danger of roasting under the sun she rushed to our aid, and before we had time to react, had covered our heads and faces liberally from a tub of what may well have been Duckhams waterproof seacock grease.  
A check in the washroom mirror confirmed that we now looked like Zombie extras from a Michael Jackson movie. The stuff was impossible to remove so we proceeded into town anyway for some more cocktails...in a Nepalese Bar....... with some Germans.

This morning I had a headache, so work on the lists was very slow indeed.

Tomorrow a lady is coming to do my insides for me. She asked me to buy some 'Old English Oil' for her. I can't wait.

Off in a hired 4X4 on Wednesday to find some walking trails in the rain forest and look at parrots bottoms. Not much other wildlife here apart from rats at the water edge and geezers in the marina. Also mozzies. Have to sleep with one Citronella Candle at night. Nice girl. Local.

MB

On  a more serious note, the Felicity J crew and owners have asked me to skipper again, this time from Panama to Australia, but sadly I think I'm about to decline because it would be very difficult to go away for so long while leaving RAPAREE in the Caribbean. Its a great sadness to miss such opportunities, but there would also be the problem of getting back to Raparee and sailing her away from the area before the Hurricane season which starts in the summer. I would also have to consider how to get her back to UK. 

Finally, I have now managed to edit photos for the past few months and will try and get some onto this site asap, although broadband speed here is very slow.