Knee-pads, Goggles and Weanies!

All the way up the Brazillian coast, we have found ourselves amongst a 90% French cruising community. Sadly, apart from 2 couples, their English is no better than our non existent French! It makes a change therefore, to be surrounded by Scandinavian Cruisers, who use Tobago as their arrival point in the Carribean, after crossing the Atlantic via the Canaries, and Cape verde. They then work their way North through the islands, before heading home via Bermuda, and the Azores in May /June.

At present, there are mainly Swedes, Danes, and a couple of Norwegians, plus a few Dutch cruisers here. The big difference, is that they all speek good English, so we don't sit around looking like stunned mullet when they talk to you!! But...... they do things a little differently. For the most part, clothing and costumes appear irrelevant on many of their boats! The Ocean crossers are all over brown, with bleached white hair, while their short term guests vary from transparant white, through pink, to bright red..... with white /blond hair! Our Swedish neighbours of 10 days, left for Grenada yesterday, and it was interesting to see their pre departure rituals !

Skipper puts on his knee pads. (He always wears knee pads, and seems to crawl everywhere . He obviously feels naked without them!) He jumped off the stern , wearing his knee pads, to clean the Aries foil, and then got back on board, and made his way up to the anchor locker, before dropping to his knees again. His son , meanwhile, with pink/white/blond girlfriend in attendance, dives over the bow, wearing nothing but black goggles, and proceeds to "inspect" the anchor chain by doing a series off "duck dives". Meanwhile," Knee pads", still on all fours, then starts hauling up anchor with the windlass, leaving his wife at the helm. They all seem oblivious of the boat moving forward along the chain, to within a metre of the boat in front of them,lying on top of their anchor. "Goggles" proceeds to pull himself up the chain, until he is hanging from the bowsprit, and with bare arse and weenie flapping in the breeze, proceeds to try and push the other boat away with his feet! No sign of fenders: no calling out to the other boat....just skipper on his knees driving the windlass, and the goggle wearing weenie flapper using his feet to stop the crunch! Mom continues to steer, and girlfriend admires! Eventually, the anchor breaks the surface, and goggle man drops down on to it in a scrubbing frenzy. In this fashion the boats works its way to a point 100mts outside the anchorage, and then everyone jumps overboard for a last swim, around the drifting boat! Fortunately there are no sudden gusts, and they manage to re -assemble on deck to now start preparing for departure;.... to lash down the dinghy, to clear the deck of loose gear etc etc. An hour until they are all set, and start slowly motoring on course towards Grenada. Two hours later, as the sun starts promising another lovely sunset, we watch them still slowly rocking and rolling along, without any sign of sails!

Bon Voyage folk!! Good luck in Prickly Bay!