Bridgetown (Part 1)

The Barbados Blog entries are coming in a higgledy-piggledy order… I think it's the effect of the Rum cocktails and the laid-back approach to life here. Keep your eyes open for earlier blog entries appearing… sometime!

The inner basin where we left our dinghy 

Having arrived and anchored off Bridgetown mid-afternoon on Thursday 11 January we went ashore to check out the lie of the land. Once again, the unseasonable heavy rain showers appeared again, which didn’t help in showing off Bridgetown at its best. We left our dinghy chained to a ladder in the inner basin whilst we shopped and it turned out to be quite a successful recce trip.

We wanted to get a local mobile SIM card so that we could get e-mails on BV and it took a while to track that down. The kiosk in the bus terminal had run out of SIM cards and so we took advice as to where else to go. I’m glad we did because we were directed to a hair and beauty products store; where else would you expect to buy a SIM card? But stock them they did! Not, unfortunately the data cards we were after but it was educational. As was a quick supermarket run to get some bread and fruit for breakfast. As you would expect for a city, Bridgetown had far more food shopping options but in all we found the food to be rather more expensive than we had expected and wine to be very much so. There was not a lot that we could do about the food costs but sundowners now consist of rum cocktails…. when in Rome!

The beach that we were anchored off has beautiful soft sand and so we just had to check that out, and the beachside bar of course. A great end to a lovely day.

The following day was also productive. We took our mifi into the Cable & Wireless (FLOW) shop and obtained a data SIM card (and a good amount of data as FLOW is available in many of the eastern Caribbean islands) and then we had a very successful trip to a fishing and chandlery shop. They made up a long wire strop for us which we can use to padlock the dinghy (the chain we have is a bit short) and they also supplied us with a shiny, new and much stronger reel for my rod. Fishing operations can commence again!

Looking towards Bridgetown from our masthead   

The anchorage by the Hilton we moved to later in our stay   

Returning to BV we had a couple of final tasks which meant a trip up the mast. First, I removed the block at the masthead that we had added for the extra emergency halyard. Then I took off all the foam strips that we’d taped to the spreaders to help prevent chafe on the sails.

And whilst I had the advantage of height, I got some shots of the anchorage and surrounding area.

The Barbados House of Assembly and Senate buildings

Back in the city, we took a wander around parts that we hadn’t visited in out whistle-stop tour the previous late afternoon/evening.

(clockwise from top left) Parish church complete with ‘proper’ wriggly tin roof; Cheapside market – hugely busy on Fridays and Saturdays, disappointingly empty on other days; roadside vendors (mostly located directly in front of large signs saying ‘NO VENDORS’; a huge pile of Scotch Bonnet chillies (BD$4 per lb)   

We enjoyed our wander around the city, and it was good to find the bustling Cheapside market [Ed: less so to find it almost entirely empty the following Tuesday!  Apparently, Fri and Sat are the busy days.]

(Top) M/Y Nero alongside at the deep-water harbour; (Bottom) view south from near the deep-water harbour towards the yacht anchorage    

We also took a 20-minute stroll north up to the deep-water harbour to locate the customs and immigration offices for when we came to check-out. We found M/Y Nero alongside with the crew completing final food purchases and check-out paperwork. Provisioning for her must be a big task; according to a crew list we saw she has a crew of 21.

(Top) Careenage looking east; (Bottom left) Nelson’s monument; (Bottom right) Careenage looking southeast across to the Waterfront Café   

Having recced a number of places, on the Saturday evening we had a belated meal to celebrate Nicky’s birthday at the Waterfront Café in the Careenage. The meal was excellent: Bajan fishcakes followed by King Fish in a tarragon sauce (me) and Cajun spiced salmon (Nicky). We also pigged out with some delicious desserts – bread and butter pudding with ginger sauce (me) and the world’s largest slice of carrot cake (Nicky). Everything was delicious and the steel drum and guitar live music added a further sunny Caribbean touch – rather required when the heavens opened again and we all had to scuttle for cover!  But at least it stayed dry for the trip back to BV to sleep off our excesses.

Bridgetown, Barbados