Wednesday 6th March 2024 was my 67th Birthday. My second spent in the Carribbean, but my first without all my family present. In 2017, Mick and I were on our first Atlantic circuit and stopped off at Jamaica, Sharon's birth place, and the entire family flew out to join me for my 60th Birthday!
Yesterday, no family, but such a wonderful group of people had turned out for the party on the beautiful beach at Pirates Bay, that yet another birthday will stay in my memory banks for as long as they last.
[Ananda offers me yet more food🤣]
On Monday I issued what transpired to be a slightly ambitious invitation to all the lovely sailors to whom we had been introduced by Lasse and Birgitte.
Ambitious because, as I mentioned in my previous post, Mick and I then discovered that landing on the beach was quite challenging. We went ahead as planned; but as it turned out, not without incident, thankfully though, without any casualties.
[From left: Lasse, Birgitte, Claudia, Liesbeth, Olena, Ronald]
Mick and I spent the morning preparing for the party. Mick cooked meat loaf and bread pudding and custard and I made rum and fruit punch and a pasta salad. I also went ashore to do some last minute shopping for party supplies and passed an interesting character along the way...
Once we (or rather Mick) had finished the cooking and we had assembled all the paraphernalia needed for the party, we loaded it into the dinghy (minus outboard motor) and rowed over to the beach at around 1430.
[Socrate holds forth!]
Instead we anchored the dinghy as close to the breaking waves as we dared, in order to be able to wade ashore with our gear. Fortunately, just as we anchored, Jan and Ellie arrived at the beach having very sensibly walked from the village quay.
Using the oars, I manoeuvred the anchored dinghy as close to shore as possible and then Mick jumped over the side only to dissapear completely into the water, which, at that moment, on top of a swell, must have been 8 foot deep! Thankfully he shortly reappeared apparently none the worse for the experience. After some more trial and error manoeuvring, I found I could position the dinghy next to a spot where Mick's head was above the water for about 50% of the time. Jan and Ellie then waded out to form a somewhat tenuous human chain through the breaking surf. Somehow we managed to get everything ashore without mishap, loss, damage, or spoiling of foodstuffs.
In the meantime, Lasse had been over in his dinghy to check on progress and had then gone off to the village shop to buy 4 bags of ice. Once back alongside our dinghy we transferred the ice on board and then ashore, via the same human chain.
Then, after I had checked the dinghy anchor was still holding I swam/waded ashore to join the growing band of party goers.
By the time I got ashore Mick and the others had almost finished setting everything up for the party. Fortunately there was quite a lot of useful stuff around including a table top and insulated ice buckets that we borrowed for the afternoon.
Most of the party goers came by foot, but two couples came by dinghy. Ronald and Liesbeth anchored theirs next to ours and tied up to it as well and then swam ashore. All was well for a couple of hours until a particularly large wave pulled the anchors up and both dinghies were washed up on the beach. Theirs upside down and unfortunately they had their outboard motor fitted. A 'rescue' party immediately got the outboard off and rinsed it thoroughly in fresh water, of which there was, thankfully, an abundant supply from a stream running onto the beach via a plastic pipe.
[Father and Son]
The other dinghy, outboard motor included, 'manned' by Johannes and Olena made it onto the beach unscathed. Unfortunately I missed their arrival, it must have been quite a sight.
Amazingly birthday presents arrived too.
A gorgeous Suraname print from Lasse and Birgitte....
A wonderful wild flower from Damian and Fanny in a bamboo vase that they had gathered from the forest that morning...
A good luck charm and delightful drawings by Ananda....
A bottle of Gambian Gin from Ronald and Liesbeth.....
A beautiful coconut sculpture made locally, from Socrate and Claudia....
Our delightful guests at this a gorgeous location were undeniably the principal ingredients of such a successful gathering, but other important factors played their parts too. Chief of which was the wonderful food. Mick's meat loaf went down a storm but perhaps the crowning glory on the gastronomic front was his bread and butter pudding and custard! Even our French guests - our culinary superiors in normal times - were impressed! Our friends brought tasty dishes too. Birgitte brought one of her lovingly crafted sour dough loafs; Damien and Fanny made my Birthday cake (😋 Chocolate) topped with a very flattering pair of candles; someone, (Ronald and Lizabett I think) brought a tasty cuscus salad and there were others too that disappeared and so must have been good.
My Rum Punch seemed to go down well - there was only half a cup left out of 5 litres by the end of the party. I'd got the recipe from my oldest son Charles - an acknowledged expert in the field of Carribean Rum Punch - fortunately for all those present, Mick insisted I cut the alcohol content (which included a bottle of Vodka as well as three of Rum) in half and we made do without Vodka!!
Once the sun started to set....
.... a mad dash ensued to clear up and load the dinghy. Despite loads of willing hands it was quickly apparent that total darkness would be on us before we finished. We therefore decided to leave a stash of stuff on the shore to collect the following morning (when we would also need to finish tidying up and replace borrowed items in their proper homes).
Damian, kindly used his paddle board to ferry stuff out to his anchored dinghy which we were then able to collect, after willing hands helped launch ours and us, out through the surf.
Mick and I completed our tidy-up task the following morning with some difficulty, but without further incident. Mick by now, had disappeared under the waves so many times when ferrying stuff to and from the dinghy/beach, that further duckings no longer qualified as incidents!
And finally.... Mick has posted a video of the party - follow the link to "Video Blog" by Mick at the top of the page and click his Playlist tab on YouTube to find it.
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