Our plan is to get the boat ship-shape and head out to Pigeon Island, try to get there for my birthday on Friday the 13th. I also have a major problem with my Digicel service. I topped up yesterday like I’ve done 100 times but I have no data. Tried everything mais il ne marche pas. We research where the closest Digicel office is and it doesn’t seem too far a walk.

In the morning I investigate the main furling mechanism, sure enough the in-haul is jammed. I play around with line and a pair of needlenose pliers and think I may be able to fix it, but it’s time to go in.

We dinghy across the channel to the marina, it’s quite big, very respectable. We park at a public dinghy dock near a restaurant which seems pretty good then go to some of the chandleries. We buy some gear including a new, spare water pump (I’ve always wanted to have one and some of our latest water issues have made that somewhat pressing, although I don’t think the pump itself was necessarily responsible.) Christy even found the right screen filter for it which we wanted to replace. Now have spares for both.

Captain Nautic chandlery is having a big sale on their Highfield Ultralight Dinghy’s. While I’m picking up some gear, Christy is asking how much. Matthew, a guy we will come to know a bit says EU$3020. That’s an amazing price, about C$700 cheaper than the duty free price in St. Maarten. Birthday present for Christy and Perry? We don’t commit but get the price in writing and leave.

Now Christy is going to do some shopping while I walk to the ZPhone store some distance away. Maps says it’s about 20 minutes though I get lost a bit and it turns out to be closer to 35. When I finally find it inside a big mall with a huge grocery store … it’s closed up for lunch. Sigh.

Thankfully the attendant shows up pretty soon and speaks really good English. She inspects all my stuff and readily admits she doesn’t know why it doesn’t work. Everything looks good. That’s what I said. She calls her manager who is in a meeting, I go for a bite to eat and come back after a while. Her manager started a ticket, nothing much to do now and Christy is waiting so I head back. I know the way now and make it in <20 minutes.

(Thankfully had Christy’s umbrella on the way over, it rained hard – so hard the paper bag with the new pump in it disintegrated and I am carrying it by hand. It doesn’t rain any more for the next few days.)

Back on Milu we put away our stuff and I work on the furling mechanism. It’s a mess. I don’t know if I did it then or if it happened before but the pulley block shatters and shreds the outhaul line itself. Well that settles that. Gotta replace that line. Maybe it’s for the best. I spend some time that evening reading the online manuals and learning how to replace the line. Ain’t gonna be easy.

Also ain’t likely we are going anywhere for a bit. The idea of getting to Pigeon Island on the other side of Guadeloupe for the weekend is pretty much shot.

No calls from Digicel and no service yet either.

That night while sleeping, I hear a small crash sound out behind the boat. I get up and go look and I can see the dinghy is hanging from 3 of 4 of it’s rope davit cables. Looks like one broke. I’ve always been impressed by the strength of those little ropes and not terribly surprised one broke. Once again, fortune smiled on us with this happening here, in a nice cozy harbour instead of out on the seas somewhere.

I drop the dinghy off the davits and lock it up. Will inspect the damage in the morning.