Tied up in Cayenne Harbour
Culinary and law enforcement adventures in French Guiana
Once in Cayenne Harbour we tied off on a spar and I got a fire going on the deck for supper.
Our boat had been leaking badly for days after running over a reef off the coast of Brazil. We bailed our way north and hauled into French Guiana for repairs. We would have to haul it out and re-caulk the plank hull.
Three Brazilians tied up next to us with a big bottle of Cachaca and an even bigger fish they had just caught. We had rice and some good coals by now in our burn barrel.
Drinking the Cachaca (some kind of God-awful jungle rum) was the first priority, so it was dark by the time Jessy went below to try and find the Cassava flour so I could cook up a fish stew.
After a good night of food and drink, our Brazilian friends cast off. As an afterthought they yelled back, “Don’t tie up there!” so we came aside another boat at anchor.
The next morning the tide was out and if we had remained where we were, our boat would have been high and dry on the cabin of a sunken boat.
By this time, the French authorities had spotted us and spent all morning summoning us to shore for processing.
For some reason, we had decided we didn’t want to go through passport inspection and customs. I really don’t know why. The guys in uniform eventually gave up.
Later in the day, three French guys rowed out to say hello. We shot the shit for a while and they invited us back to where they were working to drink beer. We had a great night and they cooked up a big meal.
Then the two double doors at the end of the room burst open. Two guys in uniform ran out and blocked the door and our friends put us under arrest. The Sureté Nationale got us in a STING!!
We were dumbfounded and very angry and we were also hurt by the betrayal.
We were arrested and taken in the adjoining room for mug shots and fingerprints.
We obviously did not want to be locked up, and to be deported would have been close to a death penalty, because our boat was sinking.
So, the negotiations began: guys like us always have information of use to the authorities.
When we were sitting in the harbour that day, we had had all the time in the world to watch a crane unload a salt-water freighter. We noticed that after 6 or 7 lifts to the wharf, the crane would swing 180 degrees and drop a lift behind a small building. We could see this from our vantage point tied up in the harbour. Then a truck would show up, get loaded by a crew, and would be gone in all of 20 minutes or so.
We thought somebody was getting ripped off, and our police/customs guys agreed.
We were friends again, and out came the visa stamp welcoming us to French Guiana, technically welcoming us to France!
The next morning, we sailed up river, used logs and lines to pulley winch our 26-foot canoa on the bank, and began to assemble our caulking cord and supplies.
Bobby yelled from down below,
“Where the hell’s the caulking compound? “
“It’s down there, in a bag. “
“No! The only bag down here is Cassava flour! “
Bobby came back up on deck and said,
“We ate all the caulking compound in that fish stew. “
The realization that we had mistakenly ingested enough caulking compound to seal a 26-foot boat slowly sunk in. We had also fed it to our three Brazilian friends. It would be in our large intestine by now and was maybe sealing up everything in our kidneys, or our liver, or our blood vessels. We all still felt OK, but figured it would be just a matter of time.
Bobby and Jessy decided to just wait it out and I walked back down river to Cayenne to find a doctor. I needed penicillin anyway for an infected gash on my shin. I was also dealing with tropical sores, yaws and ring worm from working on the hull while neck deep in the Amazon River.
After a few days of no ill-effects, we came to realize, thankfully, that the caulking we ate might have been a natural compound made of flaxseed and other materials.
Meanwhile, a very bad storm set in and we thanked God we were in from the Atlantic.
Our next destination was Devil’s Island.
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