Getting Older

Monday was my birthday. We awoke to knocking on the hull. It was not a birthday telegram. It was in fact, one of our neighbours in their dinghy advising us that we were gently drifting into their zebra-striped vessel. They were extremely nice about it, particularly since their steel boat would have hurt Django a lot more than we'd have hurt her. We decided to go to the fuel dock for water and a few stores.

Boffo's outboard having all but packed it in, we left it to be repaired. Unfortunately, the chap we had been told about was away. We didn't realize it would be several days (Friday, in fact) before we could stop paddling. Island time. Don't ever have a deadline if you want to remain sane.

Back across the bay, we found a good spot, set the anchor and WW started work on sundry repairs. I donned snorkel, mask and flippers and went hull scraping.

Hull scraping is remarkably rewarding work when your boat has been sitting about for a while. Anything afloat is attractive to small things that grow...plants and animals alike. Once they've set up house, other things come along and feed off them, larger stuff grows. It all happens incredibly quickly. Hulls covered with crud slow a boat down, so crud must go. Armed with tough gloves (barnacles can slice you up badly) and a scraper, I went into deforestation mode. Plants up to eight inches long were anchored to her hull. The water was soon full of the displaced, homeless, rootless...and of fish who thought this was all pretty grand and what was I serving for dessert?

After an hour of hull scraping, I dressed for dinner, prepared our RPs after consumption of which we paddled ourselves to the nearest dock, then walked in to the Waterfront Bar for our first initiation tot. We'd been invited and agreed to become members of the Royal Navy Tot Club of Antigua and Barbuda.

Afterward, the day's travails having somewhat fatigued us, we went back to the pizzeria and had a delicious dinner. We were given a glass of pineapple rum (gross) in honour of my birthday. Sadly, we were simply unable to finish it.