The sea became very choppy during the night, so sleeping was not great on board.
05.00hrs Skipper joined Scotty on deck, the wind was still blowing at 25knots, on our port beam.
Wow, "Look over there, yes in the distance" Volcano flames every so often, shooting into the sky, ohhh what a fantastic sight. God! this trip has everything, but, and as we said many times before, but its after getting cool, and imagine, we have to put on jackets of course it's winter down here.
06.15hrs We adjusted the clocks back 1 hour.
We arrived at the finish line outside " Port Resolution" at 05.13hrs local time, and there in front of us waiting, was "Ocean Jasper" so we were second to arrive, in a time of 66hrs, 13min, averaging 6.8knots for the journey. Ohhhhh my God! another " cock roach " in the cockpit, however, this time the bugger was dead.
06.00hrs local time, we dropped anchor in the bay, having first motored up the coast a few miles to look at the Volcano doing it business.
On first sight, the place looks good, in fact great.
We tidied up and Skipper went to the scratcher for an hour or so, whacked.
08.30hrs Scotty, Daniel and Skipper attacked the cleaning of the boat with vigor, hosing down the decks, cabin, cockpit, sails and rigging with our fresh water high pressure pump/hose...we also polished the windows and cleaned out the forward anchor locker and removed some old ropes and other bits, no longer required (its amazing the rubbish that accumulates after a while).
12.00hrs The 3 musketeers went ashore, ( Aileen is still suffering from headaches after her head first dive down the saloon ladder a week ago, so she remained in the bunk ) Skipper cleared all the paper work, Scotty went for a walk, and Daniel explored the surrounding area.
The first noticable thing on the Island, was the earth. Dark soft rich soil, and apparently great for growing veg and fruit. The smell of the freshly dug earth was intoxicating.The trees, the vegetation in general was lush, but unlike so many of the other Islands, little or no flowers. On the other hand, the roads were dirt tracks, and more like savaged river beds.
14.00hrs We had a visit from the Quarantine people, checking we had NO fresh fruit or veg on board, that all went fine
as we had made sure to use everything up before we got here. So now we were clear to do whatever, whenever.
15.00hrs The three musketeers went off on an organized trip to the Volcano, which took in a stop at a village on route.
Now, firstly, the roads / dirt tracks were something else. It seems that there was torrential rain a month ago and it washed huge ravines into the roads so driving was a nightmare, even in the 4x4's.
The Village was so different to other places we have been, very primitive and the Banyan tree's were awesome, the local men did a welcome dance which included very young boys. The interesting thing here, all the dancers were naked except for straw wrapping's around their Mickies. The dancing was fabulous, and real energizing.....this lasted about 20 mins, a great show.....
On then to the Volcano, now this was special, having survived the road journey, we all had to get out and walk up to the top of the creator this was a hard pull up the side of the mountain.........phew!
Good job we had the runners on, plus the jackets and warm clothes as it was decidedly chilly here, even with the earth on fire in the volcano.
OHHHHH the scene was spell binding, the mountain vomiting up its burning red hot lava and rocks high into the sky every few minutes, WOW... no words would ever describe what we saw..............but we have photos. Then, our Daniel had to drive a golf ball into the creator, can you credit that, he brought along a golf club specially from London to do that stunt........
All wonderful stuff. Some days tend to be a small bit boring, and others, like today.......hectic and mind boggling.... and were not finished yet.
19.00hrs back to "A Lady" and collected Aileen and returned to the shore in total darkness, we had to bring torches to light up our route to " Leah's " restaurant which was on the beach about a 1/2 mile walk through the forrest. It was pitch black, but we did have a guide over and back.
This was another new experience. The restaurant only had 15 seats in total, basically 3 bench tables and very rickity at that. The food was served on big leaves which in turn were placed on woven palm leaf plates.
But the food, grab this, was mainly different fruits and vegetables with a " local Chicken Dish " all helpyourself stuff.
NO Booze, crikey, we made a balls of that, we just did not know it was a lime juice joint.
The chicken was limited, and was basically all bones, and definitely not chicken bones as we know them.... but, it was a new experience, and we really enjoyed the whole thing!!!
21.00hrs The whole event was over and we had the benefit of another guide back to the beach and the rib. Walking through the forest in the pitch dark was great, listening to all the different sounds around us and getting the occasional
glimpse of " Bats " in the loom of the torch, flying silently through the trees...
Back on board, skipper and Daniel had a night cap before going to the scratchers......................ZZZZZzzzzzzzzZZZZZzzzzzz s
That's all for now.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)