Saturday 10th March

Anse Deshaies
Guadeloupe

16 19.776 N
61 48.771 W

I forgot to add in yesterday’s blog that as I stood waiting on the dock for Gerry to come back that I was approached by a man who asked if our boat was called Orpailleur, when I said yes he handed me the fuel injector that the guys from Fred Marine had reconditioned for us. The man apparently lives nearby Deshaies and was going to drop off the injector at the dive store as planned but recognized me standing on the dock. What great service! Anyway on to Saturday, our day began with a run into town as we had to return the hire car, pick up some petrol for the dinghy outboard, buy some fruit and vegetables and most importantly access the internet so I could at least read my emails and load the blog to date. Whilst I headed straight to the internet café, Gerry bought fuel and returned the hire car, he then joined me in the internet café where I had just finished loading the blog – it was a quick connection for a change. Once we had both finished looking at email we went in search of some lunch at a boulangerie, I hate to say this but I really could get use to the delicious boulangerie offerings. Once we had eaten it was time to buy a few bits of vegetable and fruits from a market street stall and then we got back into the dink and returned to our boat.
Gerry wanted to test out the injectors and see if the newly reconditioned one made any difference to the smoke that we were still getting out of the exhaust. His plan was to change out each injector in turn replacing it with the new one and see if the smoke reduced under load. With me stationed in the cockpit to rev the engine and assess the smoke we began the process of elimination. The smoke had definitely decreased overall but had not entirely gone and there was no difference between each injector when it was changed out – disappointing news. Once we had established that there was nothing else we could do until we found a Yanmar specialist to review the engine we decided to relax in the cockpit with our books and await the arrival of Dale and Lorie who were due to arrive here early this afternoon from Antigua where they had fixed their refrigeration problem. We had been boat spotting for about 2 hours before they finally appeared at the harbour entrance, Gerry grabbed the noodles (floating swim things) and used them to attract the attention of Dale who was on their bow, using the noodles as indicators – much like the ground staff that guide airplanes into position, he guided Gypsy Palace to a spot near to us where they anchored. We then dinked over to their boat for a traditional welcome (not more rum!) and an exchange of horror stories about fixing boats. After an hour of chat we left so that Dale and Lorie could clean up, sleep or whatever, arranging to dink into town for happy hour and some dinner. At the appointed time we took both dinks into the dock and walked the short distance to a place we had noticed for happy hour drinks and snacks. Our conversation consisted mainly of what we had been doing over the past few days – fixing boats and recovering from horrible seas. Dinner was next and we walked along the main street to find somewhere to eat. Having eaten in 2 places that were good we had high expectations. We picked a relatively empty looking place and placed our orders, then we waited and waited and waited. The place filled up, a couple of tables actually left before placing orders and still we waited. It was agonizingly slow service with only one waitress working. If we hadn’t been the first to arrive I suspect we would still have been sitting waiting at midnight. Anyway eventually the food came, it was average and we were very disappointed as we had expected similar standards to the previous 2 nights. It was edible, and half way through the main course we asked for the bill – hoping that we would get it by the time we had finished eating, the waitress seemed surprised that we didn’t want to order dessert – couldn’t wait another 3 hours for that! After paying we all headed back to our boats for the night with plans to leave in the morning for Pigeon Island – a short distance away.