Sharon arrived by plane on the 2nd of January. I took a boneshaking, but excellent value bus from Speightstown to the Airport - Bajan$3.50 - about £1.50 being the standard fare for any journey.
Barbados has a fascinating public transport service. The state bus service run by the Transport Board runs buses all over the island but they're not particularly frequent. However, that's supplemented by a private operation which runs smaller but much more frequent buses. Both services use the same bus stops (which are plentiful) and charge the same flat fare. The Transport Board Buses have air conditioning and the private buses play VERY loud garage music.
They also mostly drive at breakneck speeds and apparently have no passenger number limits. Anyone familiar with the challenge of getting on a train at Herne Hill in the rush hour will know what it's like. Except of course it's mostly sunny and always warm!
We took a(n expensive) taxi to Port Saint Charles and managed to get Sharon and her bags safely onto Bonny. Unfortunately, Sharon couldn't cope with the motion of the boat at anchor and felt unwell immediately. So, the next day - Sharon's Birthday - we searched online for accommodation ashore and eventually found a just afordable self catering apartment down the coast at Paynes Bay.
Sharon and I spent the rest of the day on the local beach sipping/slurping birthday bubbly which the poor thing brought with her.
We couldn't get into our apartment until the following day and so took Bonny into the expensive posh yachts visitors marina for the night which reduced the boat's movement enough to prevent Sharon from feeling ill.
The next morning Mick went off for the next stage of his foot treatment - an x-ray in Bridgetown. I decided to tackle a job I'd been putting off - the leaking stern gland. Since roughly halfway through our crossing I had noticed that the ingress had been steadily increasing such that I was having to pump the bilges for a 2-3 minutes every day. An inspection a week or so ago revealed a steady albeit small stream of water coming in through the gland.
The job itself was simple enough but as with everything on a boat gaining access was the bigger challenge. Our emergency water stowage and the Jordan Series Drogue had to be removed from the stowage area under the cockpit sole before the floor boards could then be lifted. A slight tightening of the two nuts on either side of the packing plate stopped the leak. That took all of a couple of minutes.
Then I decided to re-fill the grease reservoir and that's where the problems started. It's a tubular reservoir with a manual screw down piston which when turned forces grease through a copper tube into the gland which is packed with a special type of rope. Together the rope and the grease form an almost water-tight seal around the propeller shaft, provided there's enough grease and enough pressure from the packing plate. Eventually the special rope needs to be replaced.
The problem was that when I tried to remove the piston so that I could then fill the tube reservoir with grease, the screw-in shaft came away from the end of the piston. It wasn't immediately obvious how it was supposed to be attached but I feared that perhaps it had sheared. This meant I had to remove the reservoir to take a better look. This was probably the first time anyone had removed it for fourty plus years and I didn't relish the prospect of tackling seized nuts and bolts. Thankfully, it wasn't as bad as I feared and I had the reservoir removed after about an hour's hot work.
I then took a break and filled up the water tank and a few water containers.
Eventually I figured out that I could wiggle the piston end out of the tube using a socket on the end of a long extension bar. Having done that I found to my relief that the threaded shaft had merely unscrewed itself from the piston end and it was then a simple job to re-assemble the unit, re-place it and fill it with grease. Nevertheless it was thirsty work..
Once Mick returned we took Bonny to the fuel dock and filled the diesel tank. We'd consumed 100 litres of fuel in the roughly 80 hours of motoring we'd undertaken since filling up in San Sebastian, La Gomara, the Canaries. I'll need to check those numbers properly to firm up our fuel consumption (and those hours include some when just running the engine to charge the batteries) but with a total capacity of 189 litres it looks like we should get 4 days motoring out of a full tank.
Then we returned Bonny to the Anchorage and dinghed ashore for a late lunch of Pizza at the posh restaurant. Then Sharon and I took a taxi about 7 miles down the coast to our modest Apartment in Paynes Bay. We were actually pretty lucky - we had a very pleasant sea view and the studio Apartment itself was bright and clean.
Sharon and I spent the next few days on local beaches....
Exploring Bridgetown - twice. First on a Sunday when the rather sorry looking town - that's still not entirely shed its colonial legacy - was completely dead...
We couldn't find anything open apart from kiosks at the bus station. The day was salvaged when we headed for the beach and indulged ourselves with a lobster lunch...
I'm afraid our second visit during the week did little to improve my impression of Bridgetown. The fact that it was busy helped some but the fact is this (bizarrely in my view) world heritage site, has clearly seen better days and is in desperate need of investment. There are isolated examples of small craft businesses setting up but mostly its a very scruffy down at heal place. The waterside area could be a wonderful place for bars and restaurants and crafty shops etc but its derilict. There's clearly loads of foreign money on the island, with loads of posh resorts and an endless que of Cruise Ships waiting their turn to dock, so quite why the government hasn't managed to invest significantly in Bridgetown is a mystery. Mick described it as rather like North Croydon by the Sea. Personally, I think he was being unfair to North Croydon, which despite the lack of sea, has rather more going for it!
A day out at Folkestone beach/marine park where I was hoping to get some go-pro footage of turtles for the folk back home ended in a minor disaster when unknown to me at the time the go-pro was washed off my head in the surf and lost!
A few of random observations about Barbados so far....
It feels completely safe.
No hassle from the locals except in Bridgetown where you can't seem to walk five steps without being hailed 'taxi?' But even that's not hassle - a polite "no thank you" is met by an equally polite "happy new year" or other friendly response.
The locals are invariably friendly, helpful and polite.
The island seems to be covered in petrol stations and tennis courts.
It is, with the exception of the bus fares and locally grown sugar - expensive. Even what I assume is locally grown produce is more expensive than in London. Bananas were a B$1 each at a local stall - about 40p!
There's no canned beer anywhere - just bottles.
Cocktails in local bars are reasonably priced - B$10 about £4.50
Restaurants catering for tourists are extortionate.
I'm meeting Mick and Rob for lunch today. Sharon unfortunately is under the weather with a grumbling tummy. I hoped to buy some plywood locally and pass it on to Mick, to replace the broken fill-in for the forward V berth, but the only supplier in the area only supplies full sheets and won't cut smaller pieces.
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