Caribbean Fishing

Barbados
Ireland vs Bangladesh
We don’t have tickets to this game so we organized a half day fishing charter instead. It was big boat and a great crew. Unfortunately I spent the entire time throwing up, usually I make burly once them I’m OK, not today. Steve and the other guys caught quite a few fish. It’s trawling method so all you really do is reel them in. One guy was reeling in a barracuda and another much larger one swam up behind it and bit it in half so all he got in the boat was the head. We organized with the first mate to fillet one of the fish and the transport guy took us to a local restaurant called the Blue Monkey, it’s right on the beach and serves awesome rum. They cooked up the fish for us and we shared it with other people from the Galaxy who were there too.
















Grenada
Australia vs Sri Lanka
Australia won, another boring game but it was good to see Andy Symonds hit some sixes. Steve and I had dinner with Merv tonight, a burger by the pool after the big day at the cricket. Apparently it was Merv’s first cricket tour on that notorious plane trip with David Boon, he said he was shit scared, the official count of beers drunk by Boonie is 53. Steve asked him why he doesn’t have a plastic doll like Boonie, he laughed but secretly I think he wished he had one and feels less of a man. Hahaha. My burly experience is infamous on the cruise, some other blokes went out fishing to and a couple of them were sick as well so we were all getting a hard time. My only face saving point was that my burly was more effective than their’s as my boat caught more fish. Yes I know that is lame. BTW Steve’s knee is doing well and getting better every day.

Barbados
Soid Afrika vs England
Man, we are getting a real sense of dejavu. The British batsmen were hopeless, we left at lunch and took a taxi down to the boat house area and had a very fine lunch at the Lobster Alive restaurant. We ate some very yummy lobster and enjoyed some rum punch. We were right on the beach again overlooking the beach umbrellas and stunning blue water. They also have a small jetty with a swing rope and the locals have a great time there too. Back to the cricket, the ground was almost full which was great and the supporters were much more vocal today. The locals were also out in force with a band moving through the crowd with drums, trumpets and whistles really energizing the place and putting everyone in a good mood despite the lousy cricket. We are back on the boat now and Steve has gone down to the pool bar, I’ll join him later for another evening of fun. With England losing it also means that the West Indies have no chance of reaching the finals, what a shame. Steve bought some local rum at the duty free shop today and smuggled it through shipboard customs, it was an outstanding effort of distraction, lying and a reliance on “I get paid $50 a month I don’t really give a rats arse” shipboard security. Well done darl. The South Africans are having a great time tonight, they are celebrating their victory. They also have a very cool national anthem and other fun songs and cheers. I feel embarrassed at times that all we have is Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi.





Tobago
The smaller sister island of Trinidad which is renowned for drug smuggling from South America. Tobago’s port is nice and has quite a few historic forts from the British and French colonial days. We hired a taxi for a few hours, our driver Joe is a well known and popular figure around the island, getting many waves and beeps from people everywhere. The housing seems much nicer, people seem to take more pride in their homes and a lot of them are larger too. Despite having corrupt government the people have access to good quality free healthcare, we saw the local hospital and quite a few clinics around town. We visited a lovely resort which has a gorgeous cove perfect for snorkeling, there are also lots of places to dive here too. We visited a water wheel which was used to power the cane mill which was worked by the African slaves. At one of the forts the locals were setting up for a huge music festival coming soon. Elton John is coming to play and Joe explained that many of the god fearing folk are not happy with “dat gay boy” coming to their island. His said Elton admitted he is a homosexual and is married and some man is his wife. I suggested that Elton was more likely the “wife”. Joe personally didn’t care and thought the people should mind their own business. We had lunch, flying fish today, at another great restaurant by the sea. We are also visiting on the end of the dry season which is a shame as it’s quite brown and drab in a lot of places, not the lushness I was expecting. We say farewell to some of our fellow travelers tonight, it’s the end of the Super 8s cruise and they disembark tomorrow. The occasion was celebrated by a traditional Aussie pub crawl on the ship which was great fun. We look forward to welcoming around 600 more Aussies today for the finals cruise.

Barbados
Start of finals cruise
We had to disembark at 10am so a group of us went down to the Boat Yard and relaxed, had some lunch and embarked again at 2pm. I got a few braids done at the beach. Four yellow ones to support Australia and one pink one for me. Had fun meeting new shipmates. We ran into some people Steve knows in the telecommunications industry and also from the E&Y awards. We had an AST get together to meet Kerry O’Keefe, honestly I had never seen or listened to him before but we had heard a bit about him. What a funny bloke, and he knows his cricket. He certainly gave Merv a run for his money, much more entertaining and is not afraid to give his opinion where Merv is always non committal (I think that is because of his selector duties). They had a great time giving each other a hard time.

Grenada
Australia vs New Zealand
Awesome morning of cricket with Australia choosing to bat first. Poor Gilly didn’t fire again, Ponting and Haden had a fine innings. Steve was crushed when Andy Symonds got out. Pity NZ didn’t put up a fight with the bat, never mind, it was great to crush them. Amazing atmosphere today, the ground was full and everyone was having a blast. We are having a special Caribbean night onboard, hopefully they will be serving some local dishes. We don’t have many kiwis to pick on either, I guess we’ll have to pay out on the South Africans again. At least they are spirited.