8th September 2022
On our return to Port Navy Services we could not return to moor along side the dock so we put Missy in an area next to the Port in 4 M deep and stern tied her to the shore. We were among abandoned boats, sunken ship wrecks in a thick black fog of mosquitoes.
We had been told about this area the port use to dump boats where owners have stopped paying for the spots on the hard. Its quite sad to look around once loved boats that are now left here to rot. One very large trimaran was owned by a man that had died, he had spend 40 years building this boat and with no family it just sits there in the water attached to a floating dock with all the others.
We dropped our tender in the water, then made every mistake possible when lowering the outboard down, apart from dropping it in the water. Once the outboard was connected to tender we excitedly christened our tender as we rode around the corner to collect our parcels from the office. The Bluetti battery pack had arrived but no solar panels were in the box so we had to wait for another parcel, the next 3 days merged into one.
A new neighbour arrived on the 9th they just dropped anchor at the start of the inlet as I was making dinner, within 10 minutes I spotted the Police turn up in a large rib with 5 men on board and stop at the boat just arrived. It was not long till it was our turn for the police to come along side and just one of the armed Policeman boarded our boat asking for papers. I got the Passports, Insurance, Registration and proof of recent purchase, for him to check over. As it turns out they were very concerned about us being smugglers as our AIS said our boat’s Name was Batopoupa and our newly labelled boat said Missy.
The French policeman seemed to understand we had recently purchased the boat but made his thoughts known, telling us we needed to change the AIS name to match boat. This is the one thing we had been struggling with the most, marina radios are a one time program for the AIS name.
The chap insisted on searching boat just in case we were smugglers, as soon as he started towards the companionway he spotted George who made him jump and before we knew it all 5 Policeman were on board taking turns to admire George. They left us after all had been down into the boat and pushed George in the tummy just to make sure we had not stashed anything inside him. (really he is a much loved part of our family it would be rude)
We had Sunday lunch with Stuart at the pizza place in town, Stuart got takeaway pizza for Peter’s family and we sat around chilling by their plot for the afternoon.
We had left the tender in a slip the port uses to take boats in and out of the water, I walked over to check tender was not in the way when noticed the water level had dropped. Potted back to everyone mentioning the water level to Garry which Peter commented the level can drop at least 1 metre or so in this area.
We had left Missy sitting in 4 metres of water, I looked at Garry can we go check Missy is ok. On our ride around to the cove you could see the tide marks at the waters edge, it was quite a drop in water. On entering it was very clear that Missy had moved and wrecks that we had never seen around the edge were now visible. Missy was still floating admittedly as her draft is 2.1 metres but the Navigational instruments now showed we were in 2.9 M.
Monday 12th September was when all parcels we had been waiting for were delivered and it was time for us to say good bye to Stuart so our sailing journey could start.