A little infrastructure too!

A mooring field is born... Good news for some... Others... well...

A mooring field is born… Good news for some… Others… well… time to pay I’m afraid…

And now for the hard part…

There’s some yachting infrastructure I’ve promised to develop and jobs to create. All well and good having an office, but noone is going to be paid a salary if I leave it at that. Just for the record… no… I don’t pay myself a salary… but I do get a free mooring!!!

boat party

Note to myself: Never mix alcohol and job interview…

Speaking of jobs… Meet Samuel, my right hand in Saint Laurent du Maroni. Here he is at his job interview (where the work criteria was: being flexible on the job)…

I’m the one gaping like a fish out of water on the left…

Oh, and this is Marie making Internet access codes…

I'll just take a quick nap while the boss isn't looking...

I’ll just take a quick nap while the boss isn’t looking…

I obviously work them too hard.

And so, with an office fully staffed it was time to play “lay the mooring”… Not quite as easy (or as fun) as it sounds. The first workers I’d hired for the job simply gave up (“It’s all too hard”) after day one.

As luck would have it, an American salvage diver visiting Saint Laurent by yacht (meet Travis), volunteered to help get the job done and in no time at all, voila!

Meet the dynamic duo... No-one else offered to help!

Meet the dynamic duo… No-one else offered to help!

Two moorings a day positioned with a 5HP dinghy!

All the moorings were floated into position and then sunk.

All the moorings were floated into position and then sunk.

It’s amazing what you can do when you are……  desperate…

 

Business before pleasure…

Where to moor your yacht in Saint Laurent du Maroni

Visa, check…. Fuel, check…. water, check… all set to go so… just one last look at the weather forecast…. and while I’m at it, any new e-mails?

Yes…

Suriname holiday goes on hold!

My request to place swinging moorings on the Maroni River has reached a critical phase and I’m off to Cayenne to discuss final technical issues with the authorities.

If all goes well, I’ll be keeping to my proposed timetable of having supervised moorings in place before the year is out.

Here’s a sneak peek of a proposed placement.

Now it’s off to another meeting for discussions on electricity, water and Wi-Fi placement.

It turns out that building a marina in French Guiana takes tenacity…. Fortunately that’s a quality solitary sailors have in abundance… Otherwise we tend to fall off our yachts and drown.