Marooned onboard

Sunday 8 Mar, Jamaica day 14, Montego Bay: An easy International Women’s Day, onboard Cloudy Bay, sitting out the wind.

Cloudy was rocking and bouncing so much last night that we both slept in the saloon. And surprisingly, as the wind swung from N to NE during the night, the conditions eased. I guess the wind change stopped the swell from entering the harbour. It also rained quite heavily during the night and this morning there is almost 100% cloud cover with constant rain squalls. So we declare it to be a day of rest. We shall stay on board with no fixed agenda. It feels like quite a while since we last did that. But “no agenda” doesn’t mean we sit around bored. Quite the contrary, we spend the day catching up on video editing. These last few weeks we have got quite behind.

We awoke this morning to find the German cruise liner “Aida Luna” moored just 100m from us on the cruise dock. We are a bit surprised that we had not heard it come in. Over breakfast we realise we have seen this ship previously. On a weekend trip from Dubai to Oman about 6 years ago, we had seen it docked near Muscat with its German passengers all over the souk there. It’s a small world. Just after sunset, it’s deep picked horn blows, three times, and it starts to leave. No wonder we didn’t hear it last night. It slips away silently. We don’t even hear its propellers through the water.

As a break from editing videos, in the evening Oana makes another one of her “biscuit salami” cakes from a Romanian recipe. Lots of chopped nuts, dried fruit soaked in rum and all held together with melted chocolate. It’s to die for. I’ll be very happy having this with my coffee the next few days.