Clean clothes Dirty bottom and Very dirty fender

One of the great services offered by Nimrods Rum Shop is wash line dry and fold. Bernadette does a great job for a very reasonable price.

One of the not so great jobs done by locals at least in one case is a bottom job.

Now this is not my boat, mine is lots worse than that. But you can see it is at best only half done.

I only hope that the young man concerned comes back and finishes the job off.

Up to now I have always cleaned my own bottom and while I am feeling older and creakier I thought I would give it a go. Once I was in the water it was not to bad and I cleaned the whole boat in one stint. I had a feeding frenzy below me, smaller snapper 10 inch blue jacks and slightly larger barracuda were whirling around snapping up the stuff i was scraping off. Just a little worrying as the viz was not great and I would not have seen anything large and evil till the last moment. I do not have pics as my cheap underwater camera failed to light up this morning. Maybe it has finally died after 7 years of good service.

But I have another cleaning job to do.

This is my fender which has being a stand in for the promised mooring ball for the last ten or so weeks. The gooseneck barnacles are 50 mm long, the regular barnacles are 12 + mm and the soft coral is 6 + mm thick.

Skip this bit unless you are thinking about having a mooring installed in Grenada.

SEVERAL ISSUES WITH MOORING INSTALLER.

I decided that I wanted a mooring in Clark's Court Bay, one of the key factors was a feeling that I can see the creeping tide of government moorings and I thought that if I had a mooring registered in my name then "grandfather rights" might kick in. But I was also fed up cleaning chain. I discussed the mooring installation with the installer making it very clear that it must be formally registered in my name and that this was a deal breaker. No problem he said, I am already talking to the official. The mooring was installed and it seems to be a good job except that instead of fitting the usual mooring ball he took a fender off my deck and used that instead. For the next ten or so weeks he promised every Friday that he would come the next day and fit the ball. Finally I told him that I was leaving and really needed the ball. No worries he said. I phone him to remind him, yes yes i have the ball and will come and fit it before you go. Well a young man whizzed in on the morning I was leaving and tied a fender to the boat end of the mooring strop and left me to recover my fender. [ Thanks for the help Chris]

This renders the mooring unusable as you have to lift 40 feet of heavy duty chain about 10 feet to get to the strop. Now about the registration, after several weeks delay he tells me that yes the mooring is registered but not in my name but in his company name. So at the moment I have a badly fouled fender to clean and a new hang line to buy. The mooring is not registered in my name but as XXXXXX Marine Services. If I wanted to pick up my mooring tonight or tomorrow I can not do this. I hate having to hassle people to do what they promised and I hate having to deal with people who give you the runaround.

At anchor off Calivgny Island tonight

and my Cuba Libre was enhanced by the splendid sunset.