Boffo Does a Bunk, inter alia

Monday, March 2, 2009

La Jambe de Bois on a Sunday evening has great jazz. The artist and I, in anticipation of her birthday today, made our way across the Rodney Bay to dine at this very cool, artsy, fartsy little restuarant in the park. No good going in daylight as they will hit you for 13.50 each to enter the park. After 5:30, the park closes and the access is free. We had forgotten that Sunday was jazz night. The place was packed and we sat down to share a table with a local couple, she Jamaican, he St Lucian, who had spent 40 years in England in the hair dressing business and retired back to St. Lucia, quite well off, it seems. This was to be Alicia's birthday outing, one day premature, since we had little to eat aboard.

The group was young and hungry, full of energy, playing jazz classic's. Their mentor, music prof, was in the crowd and sat in for a few numbers. Really good.

So we enjoyed a very reasonably priced dinner, company and music, all ending about 10, and made for the dock to catch a ride back to Django in Boffo. Wouldn't you know it, Boffo had been out and about while we dined. She was no longer attached to her stainless wire lead, but was lying, shamefaced, further down the dock with her oars in the oarlocks. Now how had she managed to shed her leash, so painstakingly locked to the eyebolt running through her bow? Well now, don't you know that eye bolt turned out to be an eye nut! It had turned itself off the bolt and remained securely locked to the wire, while Boffo made her escape. Why she returned, I don't know, but there she was, tame and quiet, having had a bit of freedom to explore on her own.

Non the worse for her adventure, she happily rode us home to Django, across Rodney Bay.

Today was another day of maintenance. Top up all six batteries, using the mirror to spot the levels in the after batteries, newly installed in Grenada. This chore needs to be done once a month. I wonder why we never worry about this in our cars. The boat needs it regularly.

I met a couple from Canada who came by with some tax questions. I was able to help. They have been all over, living outside the country without a worry about health care and all that. They simply pay as they go, deducting their expenses from there meager income. He has not a lot of money, living on a pension, and pays little tax. Last year they took the boat to Europe. They like to summer in Venezuela, outside the hurricane box.

My prononcements about the strike in Martinique have been haunting me, so I spent some time this afternoon looking into the matter on the internet. Most of my knowledge heretofor was based on talking with other yachties and direct experience of the situation in Martinique. The press coverage reveals a more complicated story. The basic grievance goes back a long way. The elite in Martinique and Guadeloupe are descendants of the plantation owners, white and rich. They continue to own most of the means of production and all the large retail establishments. The grievance has a strong racial overtone. The strikers want a higher minimum wage for all and reduced prices for basic neccessities. The strike organisers are using very strong initimidation tactics, there are a lot of comments distancing the writers from the strikers, but there is strong sympathy for the basic idea that the blacks continue to live in a down trodden state, in a situation supported largely by the French state. The strike has spread from Guadeloupe to Martinique to Reunion and speculation has it that it will spread to the French Pacific islands as well.

My first impressions remain convincing, that these islands are receiving large gobs of state money, but this seems to be spent in a sense of appeasement for past wrongs, and the black Martiniquais have a very strong sense that they are entitled to it and more.

The bottom has been scrubbed. A good 45 minutes a day of hard work under water. Its pretty good exercise. We will go fast now, once we get the repaired sails out of the loft, hopefully tomorrow. That about does the maintenance, for now, and I have had time for a good bit of guitar work as well. Rodney Bay is pretty good. The grocery store has real steaks, not frozen, marbled and tasty. It must be the luxury condos around the bay that provide the demand, because this is the only place we have found in the Caribbean that has decent meat. Tonight, for her birthday party, the Designer and I enjoyed a lovely barbeque of steak, onion, whole garlic and green pepper, followed by a layered salad and carrot cake with not so bad, very cheap, Argentinian red wine. She is agitating to go ashore to hear the band as I write this. Been there and done that before and I am in no hurry to accomodate. Last time, I sustained serious injury.