When you clear out of a country, you must do
so within 24 hours of leaving the nation.
We plan on going to St. Lucia on Monday (when the weather looks
best). This means, we should clear
tomorrow. HOWEVER … we have to clear
from Marin and we don’t want to be in Marin tomorrow. That sucks! We want to
head back to the Sainte Anne area until we’re ready to leave. Hmmm … a lot of people clear out and don’t
leave within the required 24 hours.
We’ve never done this. We are
taking a gamble this time and clearing today, even though we don’t plan to
leave within 24 hours and will head out Monday. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that this won’t be an issue!
Clearing was easy. The French nations use a computer system where you just enter all
your information, print it out, and a representative stamps it. We were able to clear at the marina
office. There is no real fee for
clearing but the marina charged a $5EU service fee.
Once cleared, we headed back to Soulmatie. We pulled anchor and were underway within
minutes of returning. It was a short
trip (less than 2 miles) back to the anchorage at Sainte Anne. This is a nice (less crowded) anchorage and
is close to the point where we head to St. Lucia. We will be all set for leaving Monday!
The weather wasn’t the nicest. It was cloudy, overcast and drizzly. During breaks in the rain, we floated behind
the boat in our floaty chairs. The
water was surprisingly cool and without the sun to warm us, we got quite
chilled. We also got quite a bit of
sun. You forget when it’s cloudy and
you’re bordering on shivering that you actually are getting the UV Rays! Luckily, we got into shade before we got too
crisp!
Later in the day, we took a dinghy ride along
shore. There are some places that look
interesting for snorkeling. We may try
tomorrow and see how it is.
For dinner, I made pasta. It’s fun being on the boat and trying to
make yummy dishes from limited stock.
We only have one package of ground beef left (it’s actually some of the
ground filet mignon) so I’m saving it for really good burgers! Before we left, we’d bought some canned beef
from Costco. Hmmm … wonder how that
would be in pasta sauce? I got out my
Magic Bullet and ground the roast beef into tiny pieces. I then got a can of mushrooms (I hate canned
mushrooms but it’s better than nothing) and ground them into small pieces
also. We still had fresh onions and a
green pepper so I was able to add some fresh veggies also. We’d bought quite a few jars of marinara
sauce before we left so we were set for a yummy sauce. It turned out very thick (probably only
needed about ½ the can of roast beef) but really tasty.
The pasta was another issue. We had several boxes of various types under
a bench seat in the main salon.
Somehow, they’d gotten slightly damp and were now covered in mold. MAJOR YUCK!!! Into the trash they went!
We dug out a box from a different location and it was fine. Lesson learned … from now on, all pasta is
removed from the boxes and stored in air-tight bags!
Dinner was excellent. Our last bottle of French red wine
accompanied our dinner and we sat and watched the sun set over the hills of
Martinique. Very nice evening!
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