Lyn's Log, 30th May 2006
Passage to Tobago

Scarborough, Tobago.
N11º11', W60º44'
10,567 miles.

The three Iles du Salut are tiny dots twenty miles off the coast of French Guyana, a little further north from Cayenne. I have never seen so many palm trees so close together as on these islands, and they are small enough to walk round in a couple of hours. Until 50 years ago the islands were a prison and now the buildings are mostly very overgrown ruins. Coconut palms obviously grow quite quickly. Part of the prison cell buildings have been preserved enough to see what the awful conditions would have been like, and some of the surviving warders cottages are still either lived in or can be rented for holidays. There is a camping area, and a small hotel with a restaurant and bar. This was wonderful not only for the glorious views and cold drinks, but also to enjoy the French cuisine and wine again. In the grounds we found many aguti, iguanas, parrots, peacocks, and monkies. There were many coconuts lying on the ground, both green and brown. It was the green ones that the Brazilians used for chilled coconut milk, but we took a brown one back aboard. We could hear the milk inside of it and was surprised just how light it was. We sawed it in half losing the small amount of milk but enjoyed a fresh coconut meat. There were also bananas and limes ready for eating, but as they were still attached to the plants we left them alone. When the monkey shook some limes out of the tree, the aguti beneath were waiting to carry them off!

The first day at the islands was very windy and wet, with just a brief spell in the afternoon for a quick explore, but the second was calm with a hot sun. It was not possible to get any kind of supplies on the islands but we thoroughly enjoyed our visit and break from sailing. We now had 600 miles left to get to Tobago.

We left the islands on Tuesday 16th May and soon left the clouds and rain behind and had the Trade winds blowing us steadily on our way, with the Guinea current giving us anything from half to two knots extra speed. It was sometimes rather rolly, but the seas calmed down and it was a pleasant, fast passage of only five days. I have to admit though that I do get bored. But there were two or three memorable incidents.

The cooker swings back and forth as the boat rolls, but on its forward swing it would keep sticking and then would suddenly unstick, throwing around anything in the oven and spilling the pot on the hob as it jerked backwards. One evening Andrew got so annoyed at this he kicked the cooker. In the oven he was cooking a tinned pie and the half-baked pastry topping slid all over the gas jets at the back of the oven. A big sticky mess caked itself over all the nooks and crannies at the back of the oven and glued up the jets. We got it cleaned up eventually when in harbour, but it was not a happy evening.

The next evening after dinner we had enjoyed a French tin of duck legs in lentils and the bones and skin were in one of our dishes for disposing overboard. Andrew went to throw out the waste, but somehow lost his grip on the dish. The waste was plastered over the boom and the deck and the dish floated in the sea. Andrew went into man-overboard drill turning the boat round and, with the boat hook, a looked out for the dish. After a while we turned around again and I saw the dish. We had three attempts at retrieval, not it was impossible to actually hook up the bowl in quite big seas, and then it became too dark to find it any more. We'd put on the engine in reverse during this exercise, forgetting about our towed generator, and were very fortunate that its rope hadn't got wrapped round the prop shaft. During these manoeuvres the preventer rope, which is tied to the booom to stop an accidental gybe, had been partly loosened to enable the boat to turn, and we forgot to reset it. Later when I was steering, the boom gybed accidentally which would not normally have been a problem, but the loose preventer swung across the cockpit and caught me around the neck trying to decapitate me. It left me with a nasty rope burn halfway round my neck, though it did not break the skin and the accident could have been a lot worse.

One afternoon when I was in the saloon, I heard a lot of squeaky screeching. Looking out, there were lots of noisy birds flying around as if there were fish nearby, and then I heard a blow and spray and saw a long dark back glide through the surface of the water beside us. It was a whale as long as our yacht. We watched it blow several times as it moved on but never saw any more of it. It was the closest I’ve seen such a large whale.