Now comes the hard part. Once Pirat was in the water, Lee and I had our work cut out for us getting her ready to sail. Fortunately, Port Zante Marina had very reasonable rates and an excellent location relative to downtown Basseterre. We didn’t feel rushed and no longer had to drive our rental car back and forth to the boat yard. We did get to make that trip once this trip in one of our favorite St. Kitt’s buses, complete with blaring reggae, crammed seats and high speeds.
The first order of business was scrubbing the extremely grubby deck. My feelings about our teak deck go from hate to love every time we give it a good cleaning. It may be a long, grueling task but there is nothing more satisfying than the healthy glow of a freshly scrubbed teak deck.
Lee and I had spent almost an entire day back in the yard re-rigging the halyards, whose feeder lines had chafed through and become tangled. I hauled Lee up the mast no less than 4 times to accomplish that. We put the sails and deck hardware on at the marina.
I had an easy time provisioning in Basseterre. In one trip, I bought produce from various stands in front of the supermarket across the street from the marina. I loaded up with yams, carrots, various local roots, chayote squash (Lee’s favorite), green onions, thyme, eggplant, cucumber, tomatoes, bananas, and even lettuce. Everything was fresh and gorgeous.
In my next trip across the street, Lee helped me gather the rest of our provisions from Rams, the local supermarket. Certain things were hard to find (like coffee, which the Kittitians don’t seem to to care much about) but I didn’t want to fill the boat with too much food, knowing we’d only have a couple weeks to eat it. I already had some staples like rice and beans, which miraculously survived the scathing temperatures.
Lee’s dad arrived on Saturday the 16th and we decided to take one more day to get ready. It’s a good thing we did, because it took us most of the next day to check out with customs and immigration. First we waited for the customs officer to show up at the nearby cruise ship port office. He happened to be the same officer who checked Lee in back in Sandy Point when we first arrived in St. Kitt’s. Weird! Lee remembers him being really afraid to come out to the boat in the dinghy.
The customs guy sent us to immigration at the airport to get our passports stamped. That meant a taxi ride, since we’d already returned our rental car. At the airport, the woman we spoke to at immigration wanted paperwork from the customs officer who said he wouldn’t give us our papers till we got our passports stamped. Ummmm…okay… The immigration officer was not happy. The grumbled. She made some phone calls but didn’t seem to know the number of the customs office. Finally she just stamped our passports and sent us off. Fine with me!
With everything officially ready to go, the whole crew settled down for our last good night’s sleep for a while. We were up early the nest morning, March 18th, to sail for Curacao.
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