I cleared out with Jamaican customs and immigration. Again.
That’s the fifth time I think. In Port Antonio they are a bit more reasonable.
In Montego Bay, the lady seemed a bit annoyed that I ‘seem to just pop up
whenever I feel like it’ and expect customs and immigration to be here waiting.
Restocked, refueled and refreshed I sailed out of Port
Antonio and out to sea early Friday morning. Almost straight away I was headed
for a rainstorm, so I reefed in and sailed through it. For the rest of the
passage I managed to avoid three more huge storms, sailed through the night,
all the next day and made it to within sight of Haiti Saturday evening.
Anse D'Hainault, Haiti
Before I saw anything I could smell the island – burning
wood, cooking maybe. The wind died and I motored the last ten miles. Then I
saw a little cluster of plastic bottles glide past my hull – fishing lines and
lobster pots. They were everywhere, and almost immediately I heard a horrible
clanking juddering from my engine. I shut it off, and saw a couple of small
water bottles and some string disappear off my stern. Couldn’t go forward,
tried reverse, nothing. Stuck until morning I thought. I tried again and got
going. For five minutes, then exactly the same crunching – more fishing lines.
I was trying to spot them but seeing a very small clear plastic bottle on a
moonless night was nearly impossible. This time I got in and cut the lines
free.
I anchored off Anse D’Hainault, which looked fairly poverty
stricken – children without clothes on bits of wood and dugout canoes came to
ask me for money, food, anything. I saw no engines, just lots of little sailboats.
Seems like a step back in time, or vision of the future…
The next morning I freed up my prop, and headed off to Ile a
Vache.
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