22 April 2013 Cayo Media Luna to Montego Bay, Jamaica (Day 2)
The wind finally backed and pick up at the start of my 11-2 watch so we were able to sail for four hours until it dropped again when we were 20 miles from the coast of Jamaica. By half past seven, we were eight miles offshore and just about sailing in a light breeze. It was exciting to see the coast of another country and it looks to have lot more hills than I expected - perhaps we can do some hiking while we're here.
I went to bed for an hour and when I awoke, we were drifting along at less than a knot, the sea was calm and Glenys was on the front deck taking photographs of a school of Common Dolphins who were slowly swimming around us in the glassy sea. We watched them for ten minutes before I hit on the idea of jumping in to photograph them, but unfortunately, they wouldn't come any closer than 25 metres from me.
We motored into the harbour of Montego Bay and went into the anchorage just off the Yacht Club, but it's a very, very small space mostly filled with moorings, so we went onto the Yacht Club dock. It's a Mediterranean style dock where one has to pick up a bow mooring and then back into the dock - fortunately, there wasn't much side wind, so I didn't make a fool of myself.
The clearance procedure was fairly painless because the officials all came to the Yacht Club. We only had to see Agriculture, Immigration and Customs, so we were soon finished. There was some confusion about a cruising permit for when we want to go around to Port Royal because we want to take a couple of weeks and stop in about six anchorages. It would appear that this is unusual and they normally only give clearances to go from port to port and you're expected to report to customs at every port. We didn't push it because we'll only have to go through it with someone else when we ask for the coast-wise clearance when we leave here.
Everyone is very friendly at the yacht club and it's only $1 per foot, so we've decided that we'll will stay for a few days especially since the anchorage is so tight. As usual we were very tired after the overnight sail, so we bought a couple of celebration beers at the bar (which cost a staggering $5 each) and collapsed in the cockpit.
After an hour's kip, I walked 2 miles to a shopping centre to get some essentials beer, coke and milk - I couldn't bear the thought of paying $5 for another beer, when I only had to pay $1.25 at the supermarket. It was a very long hot walk back, so I was ready for a cold beer when I arrived back.
We treated ourselves to a meal out at the yacht club and chose Jamaican specialities - Goat Curry for me and Creole Conch for Glenys. There's a very good internet connection here, so we sat up later than should have, catching up on emails and surfing the net.
23 April 2013 Montego Bay, Jamaica
We’re in a different time zone and the clocks have gone back an hour, so I woke at quarter to six just as the sun came up. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I jumped out of bed to use the internet and published five weeks of articles on our web site.
Later on in the morning, we went to supermarket. The local transport here is done by "Route Taxis", which are cars running on a standard route radiating out of Montego Bay town. The normal one way fare is $1 US, but we wanted one of them to take us to the supermarket, wait and then bring us back. Being white tourist-types, the best that we could negotiate on the street was $15US for the round trip.
We had lunch in a café in the supermarket. We just had a sandwich, which was okay, but I kept making envious glances at people who were chomping their way through a huge plate of Mutton Curry and rice which looked fabulous. We rushed around the supermarket conscious that the driver was waiting outside.
The supermarket staff were very helpful. Beer is mostly sold in bottles here but we don't like to have any glass on board, so we like cans. The only beer in a can was Carib and there were only three cans on the shelf. I asked one of the guys if there was any more and ten minutes later, a forklift truck had dropped a pallet down on the floor and I had six case in my trolley.
We had three trolley loads of stuff to load into the waiting taxi. He’d been sat out side for well over an hour, so I didn't feel too bad when we gave him $20 .
I had a look at our main fridge which has not been freezing properly and found that it was completely empty of refrigerant. I recharged it and we’ll see what it does overnight.
24 April 2013 Montego Bay, Jamaica
Once again, I couldn't stay in bed much after half past six. I've got too many things running through my head. It was the start of a new tax year in the UK, so I rearranged some of our investments to take advantage of tax free allowances for ISAs and pensions.
After lunch, I checked the fridge and found that it has lost all of the refrigerant again. I emptied a couple of lockers and pulled up floor boards, so that I could see all of the pipework. A few months ago, I recharged the fridge with refrigerant that contained a dye that fluoresces in ultraviolet light and I managed to spot the leak, which was on one of the quick-fit connectors on the pipework. I confirmed the leak by using good old washing-up liquid and water brushed on the joint - there were obvious bubbles.
I had a similar problem on our other fridge back in Bequia over a year ago and the solution that fixed the problem was to cut out the connectors and simply solder a piece of copper tubing in place. I chatted to David, the Dockmaster, who is going to see if he can get a refrigeration engineer to come out and look at the job in the morning.
I didn't feel very confident that an engineer will be coming out, so I pulled the connector apart and inspected the seals. I couldn't see anything drastically wrong, so I smeared on a little silicon grease and tightened it as much as I can. we'll see how it lasts overnight.
25 April 2013 Montego Bay, Jamaica
I was up at dawn again – these six o'clock starts are going to kill me, but I'm finding it hard to staying bed when it's light and there's always the sounds of people talking on the dock, which is unsettling after spending so much time at anchor.
I got on with doing admin on the internet until Glenys managed to drag herself out of bed, then I emptied all the lockers again in the vain hope that a refrigeration engineer would turn up. By half past ten, David was still waiting for a call back, so we decided to go into down town Montego Bay.
As we walked out of the yacht club, a guy called Fenton intercepted us and said that he could take us into town. We had to go to the post office to pick up some mail that has been sent over from the UK, so agreed to pay him $10 to take us to the post office and then into town. I'm glad that we went with him because he was very helpful.
We'd been told to go to a particular post office, but that wasn't the right one, so Fenton drove us to another depot in town and dropped us off there after showing us where we'd be able to get a route taxi back to the Yacht Club.
It was total chaos in the post office with hundreds of people queuing at various windows. I eventually found the correct window and joined the "queue". I use the word "queue" loosely because it was more like a "cluster" with people joining the crowd from both sides of the window. There were six or so people simultaneously trying to attract the attention of the girl sitting behind the counter.
It was mob rule. The poor girl lost her rag a couple of times saying that she could only do one "ting" at a time and if we hassled her then she’d get all confused… At one point, she just got up and disappeared, leaving us bemused for five minutes, then returning and magically handing out beige coloured envelopes to several people.
As I was the only white guy in the whole post office, it only took me fifteen minutes to attract her attention and hand her my slip. Five minutes later, I had our mail in my hand. I told the girl that she was doing a great job and be happy. The others in the queue laughed and loudly agreed with me. As I left, I could hear half a dozen people resuming their cries of "Miss, Miss ..."
It was a huge culture shock to walk around the bustling town after spending the last two months in Belize and Cuba. I was expecting Montego Bay to be a sleepy little place, but it’s a busy large town . There were thousands of people wandering around and not a white face in sight.
We were obviously a target and had several guys walking up to us and being very friendly. They started by asking where we’re from, then saying that they work in the airport or the port - perhaps we’d seen them? They then asked where we wanted to go and started to walk along with us. We shook off three of them before one finally thought that he had a chance to ask us for a dollar. I politely told him no which he was okay with. It’s kind of sad because it makes us distrust everyone which isn’t fair. Some might be genuinely friendly.
We had to have Jamaican Patties for lunch, so we went into a Jamaican fast food place called Juicy Patties. The Red Pea Soup that we had was very tasty and the Patties were good as well, but I the only way that we could tell the difference between the shrimp and the chicken patties was by the spot of food colouring on the pastry - green for chicken and pink for shrimp...
We went to the market and were initially approached by various people wanting to sell us things – taxi, hair braids, aloe cream for the sun, etc. It’s very different to Grenada and St Lucia where they’re more used to foreign folk wandering about - I guess that here the only foreign folk that they see are tourists who are coming to gawk. After ten minutes, they all realised that we were actually going to buy some vegetables and left us alone.
I spotted some odd looking fruit which about the size of a large apple, but was split open revealing white flesh and big round black seeds. It turned out that this was Ackee, which is very popular in Jamaica, but we've not seen it on any of our travels around the Caribbean. The old lady on the market stall opened one for us and told us how to cook it - we bought some of course. I later found out that you should only eat the white flesh from Ackee that has naturally split open. If it is not ripe, then it contains a toxin that can make you ill - commonly called Jamaican Vomiting Disease...
We got a Route Taxi back from town. The locals speak patois all the time and it takes a while to get through to them in English, so it took me a few goes to get him to understand that we wanted to go to the Yacht Club and would only pay 100 Jamaican dollars (about $1). As in most places you have to negotiate the price before you get into the taxi.
We chilled out for the rest of the afternoon and Bruce & Gina from “Dream Catcher” came for a few beers. Glenys conjured up Saltfish with Ackee, which is the national dish of Jamaica.
26 April 2013 Montego Bay, Jamaica
I was up early again. A sport fishing boat tied up alongside us yesterday afternoon and they were getting ready to as the sun came up - shouting an messing about of course. I'm getting weary of this place - time to move on, so we planned to leave tomorrow.
David, the Dockmaster was on holiday, I had no idea if a fridge man was going to turn up or not, so all I could do was wait. I entertained myself by watching guitar lessons on the internet. We had arranged to share a taxi with “Dream Catcher” to go to the supermarket, but just before we were due to leave the fridge dude wandered up the dock, so Glenys left me behind.
I showed him the problem and after a bit of discussion, he agreed that the best plan was to cut out the faulty connector and replace it with a length of copper tubing. Unfortunately, he couldn't do it immediately, but had to go back to the office to get them to give me a quote. This turned into a bit of a saga because we don't have a telephone, but Heather in the yacht club office sorted it all out for us in a couple of hours. The refrigeration company would invoice the club and I'd pay the club.
So by three o'clock, I'd agreed a fixed price of $120 and I had my man Christopher back on board with all his gear. It only took him thirty minutes to remove the leaking connector and solder the copper tube in place, but then it took him 2½ hours to evacuate the system, recharge it and check that it was cooling properly. It takes ages for them to wait while the fridge compressor does it's job.
I went through a similar process with a fridge man in Bequia, but that time I was paying him by the hour at a rate of $50 per hour, so this time I made sure that I was paying a fixed rate. We had a good chat about his life in Jamaica and he was really interested in our lifestyle inboard, so the time flew by. He was very interested in cooking and gave Glenys some interesting Jamaican recipes. We cracked open the beers at five o'clock and he became even more talkative. It was well after six o'clock before we managed to prise him off the boat. Oh, and he seems to have fixed the fridge...
We had Jamaican Patties for dinner - Glenys had stopped off at a Juicy Patties to buy a box of them.
27 April 2013 Montego Bay to Bloody Bay, Jamaica
I managed to lie in until half past seven. We filled up with diesel, bought some petrol, filled up with water and paid our marina bill - a staggering $600US all included. We'd been doing very well for not spending money while we were in Cuba, but we got clobbered here.
We left the dock just after half past ten and had a cracking downwind sail to Bloody Bay, which is a lovely half-circular bay with a white sand beach. We anchored about 100 metres from the beach in a nice big sandy patch. Unfortunately, there are lots of big hotels around the bay with hundreds of tourists. So for the rest of the afternoon, we chilled out as much as we could trying to ignore the jet skis and the loud PA system at the nearest hotel.
Our guide book tells us that in the 1700s, Bloody Bay was a popular harbour for pirates, notably “Calico Jack”, who although ferocious was known for his penchant for soft calico underwear and rum. He was captured here in 1720, along with two women pirates who fought furiously besides him. They were all sentenced to hang and “Calico Jack” was strung up on a Cay outside Port Royal, but the two women received a reprieve because they were both pregnant.
28 April 2013 Bloody Bay, Jamaica
It was Sunday today, so we chilled out in the morning and then went ashore to find somewhere to have Sunday Lunch.
As soon as we pulled the dinghy up onto the beach, we acquired a “friend”, who has a glass bottom boat, runs a taxi and owns a smallholding – do I want to buy some ganja? It’s impossible for a white person to walk around Jamaica without being accosted. We politely declined all of his various offers and walked down the beach, which has lots of stalls selling the normal tourist junk- tshirts, carvings, beads, etc. Unfortunately, there were only two eating places and they wanted $12-15 for a plate of food, so we decided to head towards Negril town about four miles away.
Initially we walked along the road, but it was very boring, passing long walls protecting huge hotel developments, so we stopped a route taxi. He dropped us off at a small local restaurant, where we had Goat Curry and Pork with rice. A couple of Red Stripe washed it down nicely. With nicely full tummies, we wandered down the road looking for the town centre, but it turns out that there isn’t one – just a long straight road. We wandered onto the beach and after walking back for half a mile stopped to chill out for a while at a bar – don’t you just love Sundays.
We caught a route taxi back to Bloody Bay and back to Alba, where we went for a refreshing swim. I went snorkelling around the boat, which was mostly sand and weed with not a lot to see, when suddenly a large Spotted Eagle Ray appeared out of nowhere. With six foot wide “wings”, this was an impressive sight especially since it came over to check me out and swam around me less than 10 metres away. I wish that I’d had my camera.
29 April 2013 Bloody Bay, Jamaica
I had to get up in the middle of the night because I hadn't tied the dinghy down properly on the davits and it was moving as we rolled and making an annoying rubber squeaking sound. While I was up, I took down the cockpit mosquito netting and put up the uber-scoop, so that we’d get a little more breeze in the back cabin. Unfortunately, a horde of mosquitoes must have been lurking around because I ended up with six more bites for my troubles.
It was a very pleasant morning, so we decided to stay another day. As we had an internet connection, I spent most of the day downloading guitar lesson videos and messing about with music.
We also went snorkelling by Booby Cay at the south end of the anchorage. There are many moorings dotted around, presumably put in place by the Marine Park, but the reef is very poor. There's hardly any coral or fish – apparently the locals used to use dynamite to fish in this area and have devastated the reef. We soon gave up and zipped across to Sandy Cay, which is a small rock at the north side of the anchorage and it was better, but the water is very shallow. We amused ourselves looking at all the small fish – it’s like a nursery.
30 April 2013 Bloody Bay to Bluefields, Jamaica
We were up early and motored out into the flat calm sea. After an hour, Glenys spotted a lot of splashing off to starboard, so we went over to have a look. It was a huge pod of Common Dolphins that were in a feeding frenzy - I suppose that they had a bait ball of fish because there must have been fifty or so dolphins rushing around in a very small area. We watched them for ten minutes before leaving them to it.
We continued motoring around South Nigril Point past Rick's Bar (allegedly one of the top 10 bars in the world) and a nice looking lighthouse. Then the world turned nasty. The wind picked up as we started to head east and we encountered big steep waves right on our nose. We tried to sail, but our course was taking us into the reef, so we turned on the engine and gritted our teeth for a couple of hours, until we could finally hold a course and sail.
To make matters worse, there are loads of fishing pots scattered about wherever the water is shallower than 30 metres. These damn things mostly have transparent, plastic bottles marking their position, which are incredibly difficult to see in breaking waves, so one of us had to be on careful watch all the time.
We had a good sail for the last hour, almost straight into the anchorage, but it was pretty fraught because the depth dropped to 6 metres over reef and we still had fairly large waves with white caps. We were very anxious about whether the anchorage would be tenable, but it wasn't too bad when we got there.
Bluefields is a small, shallow bay just around a headland with a small beach, some smart houses and we think there's a couple of bars because we had loud reggae music playing until after dark. We struggled to get the anchor to hold on the weed seabed, but eventually found good holding in a sandy patch in 3 metres of water.
No peace for the wicked, I spent the rest of the afternoon on small jobs fixing a couple of things that went wrong on the way here. The winch for the roller furling on the genoa had started to make an awful squealing noise and was getting very stiff, so I stripped it down and greased everything.
The 12V socket for our chart plotter had also stopped working. This was one of those escalating jobs – a pin had broken off the plug, but had also blown the fuse. I had to remove the compass to get at the fuse inside the binnacle. The fuse holder was very hard to get to and the fuse broke off in the holder. I had to remove the whole 12V socket to get the fuse out of the fuse holder. I then had to put it all back together and then replace the plug.
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