Wednesday, 8 July 2015

70. Live and Let Die

We sailed past Trident Hotel on the way to port Antonio

It’s sad to be leaving Port Antonio after just 3 nights. Errol Flynn Marina is one of the nicest marinas I’ve stayed in, but I’m excited to see more of Jamaica. And Paul and Ben don’t have much time, so we set off from Port Antonio to Oracabessa, where Ian Fleming’s house is. However, the wind died and we couldn't make it before dark, so we gave up on that plan. The new Garmin chip and Admiralty chart didn’t arrive in the end, and I didn’t fancy a small cove, narrow channel and lots of reef in the dark without them. We turned on the engine and kept going for a while, hoping for Discovery Bay by morning.


Portland, Jamaica


Around 10pm we saw a lot of lightening, almost constant flashing in the distance, but getting nearer. We headed north a little and eventually managed to let it pass behind us. It was a close thing; we could see the wall of rain and felt a few drops. The very strong winds were making us tense, but we were now doing up to 8 knots. We dodged a couple more very scary looking squalls and eventually made it to Montego Bay.

Dolphins off Montego Bay

Dolphins cheered us up after a rough night running away from lightening. There were a few playing in our (quite small) bow wave. We anchored off the Royal Montego Bay Yacht Club, which is a real old colonial time-warp kind of place. More burgers and beers, too exhausted to do anything else. It was another hard sail.



Bad news from Yamaha Jamaica – my outboard is totally mashed up; it can't be fixed. That sucks – $500 wasted, although I got a few weeks use out of it. So I’m looking for another; I need something cheap.

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