Settling down in Suriname

To our English readers. Your suspicion was right, last blog post was written in Swedish. Don’t worry, just a test.

Isle de Royal

Royal Tern (no joke)

Our grand plan to visit the Maroni River at the border between French Guyana and Suriname was abandoned. Reason was that we felt insecure having no pilots and a not very up to date and detailed charts. No doubt it would be “a piece of cake” with the right mind-set and chart work – and some local knowledge to ask for advice. Instead we settled with a night at anchor at Isle de Salut, more specific Isle de Royal, one of the infamous French prison islands, known from the “Papillon” movie, or the (real) French political prisoner Alfred Dreyfus. It is hard to believe that 25,000 French prisoners were detained here between late 1800’s and mid 1900’s. Most of them died here and where thrown to the sharks that are still plentiful in these waters. The day we left a big cruise ship anchored and launches shipped ca 6-700 passengers on an island tour.  Overall our trip here took 6 days and the distance from Fortaleza was about 1050 nm so we had a very good sail, mainly due to the strong Guyana current.

After a day and a half sail from Isle de Salut we have now (Sunday 31 Jan) reached the capital of Suriname, Paramaribo. We had to anchor due to sunset right at the city center to wait for daylight and a favorable tide (flood) in the morning. After 1 hour of motoring in heavy rain we have now anchored at Domburg Harbour Resort, a modest but friendly facility for sailors (mostly Dutch) to have showers, water, toilets, and the social environment with a restaurant/bar. Tomorrow we will most likely spend most of the day visiting the ordinary list of authorities. This time we have filled in a new form for the Health authority. Have we had any deaths on board due to other causes than accidents? – Thank god no we have NOT.

Once we are through with paperwork we will plan some rain forest trips. Surinam is the perfect place to get closer to the Amazon jungle area.

Part of the extensive Fishing fleet of Surinam

Mostly dirt roads, but surprisingly grand houses

Tina Princess, safely moored in the Suriname river