Good Evening all,
It’s now quieter I’ve just had a shower and cooled off, the boat has been cleaned and is relatively clean. The facilities remind me of a lovely phrase in an Ethiopian travel guide that Jean had kindly given me - Ethiopian Hotel owners do not spend much money on maintenance and consequently the age of a hotel indicates how much is likely to be working. The showers one has to have turned on by request because of a leak that was on going in the 90’s when Nigel Calder wrote his cruising guide, the showers are pretty basic and only go from relatively cold to a little cooler but this is fine in the heat.
I had a quick cycle in the very local area which is quite a bit from the town. It has some fine views. We’ll see more tomorrow. There’s a monument to a revolutionary soldier, whether someone specific or just a general one I’ve yet to find out. Probably I will tomorrow.
I may break this off suddenly when the guests arrive, they should have landed about 50 minutes ago so I suspect I’ve still an hour before they’re likely to turn us into a floating fiesta.
So far everyone seems incredibly friendly, the checking in by the authorities, which I’d been led to believe would take hours if not days was fine, a woman Doctor and Port officer seem to reside at the marina for the odd boat that comes in (we are one of two that are occupied, there are two others in commission and a few sadder looking ones that one always sees around the place.) I’ve topped up with fuel and water. The battery charger still isn’t working - I may have made it worse by trying it in a 15 instead of 10 amp circuit breaker in case it had been the breaker that was faulty, it obviously wasn’t so now I’ve put a much bigger current through it. A local chap had a quick look and is coming back tomorrow- I was offered two options, a cheap local one or a shipyard owned by Dutch. In partnership with some locals, I suspect that would be too expensive to consider, hopefully we’ll not need it much but it’s nice to know the batteries are full when on a pontoon. At the moment I may have to start the engine in the middle of the night to keep the fridges running.
The shore power is an interesting set up, they have different sockets to us so told me to just stick the wires in the holes having checked first that I’d found the right voltage, so I did this, having taken some shavings from a pallet to stuff in with the wires to hold them in place and it seems to be working fine.
I’ve paid for 3 nights here so we’re here for another couple anyway before heading West, there is some sort of ‘Do’ here to celebrate Valentines day which hopefully will be fun and we’re having food delivered from a local seafood restaurant on Granma Island (I think some connection with Castro’s chartered Yacht when he arrived to take charge.)
A big aeroplane’s just landed, I hope it’s not theirs as that’ll make them over an hour late. Even out here two of the taxis were 50s American jobs looking gleaming, the other was a Russian one. It’ll be interesting to see what we get tomorrow when we go to town.
Right, time for a beer, I’ve not had one since St Martin and have put a case in the fridge.
Slainte
Jock and Yemaya (Incidentally a popular Creature around here with the ancestry that they have )
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