Hallelujah and The Irish Luck

At first this title might sound a bit absurd, but it goes nice for capturing the last couple of days here in Carriacou. After leaving Clifton Friday morning we arrived just after lunchtime in Carriacou – Tyrrel Bay. Just before arriving I received a phone call on sea. The combination of not looking on the screen on the phone, hence not spotting the number, loud noises from the engine and the caller having a male voice with an accent lead me to believe that it was a Peter (a friend who is currently living in the UK but is a Slovakian) who had called me. So I started to ask him how the weather was in Brighton, how work was and if the English girls who he was serving were behaving in their best English manner and so on. I surely must have sounded like a radio and I am sure that the conversation must have made very little sense to the person whom I spoke with; as it turned out that it was not Peter but Toni an Indonesian. So why, you might ask, did Toni never correct me and said ‘Brighton why the heck are you talking about Brighton’? Despite being the best of the Indonesians on the Flying Buzzard, when it comes to talk English, Toni's English is not too developed to be fair . I can not help wonder how much he actually picked up of that conversation, but anyway it is sort of like eating a black olive and think that it is a very dark grape. It leaves you wondering, how you could mistake an Indonesian accent with a Slovakian?! Perhaps the two languages have more in common that I realized and hence ends up with a somehow similar accent.
Returning to the story. We arrived safely in the lovely bay of Tyrrel to finish up the remaining work on our report. After an event-less weekend, we sat out Monday afternoon to check out Hallelujah. Despite its name this is not a church, or its like, but a floating bar. Arriving in time for happy hour, we came to realize that this was the spot where everybody and his brother came. Cheap beer and good company, who could wish for more. Leaving behind whatever shyness I might have brought with from Denmark, I made myself familiar with the sailors on the floating bar, here in particular Jerald from North Carolina and Catherine and Pat from Dublin. And the first thing I remember speaking with Catherin about was the Eurovision, and how bad (sorry Catherine) the Irish had preformed, which of cause lead us into a lovely conversation about Johnny Logan, Abba and so on. Eventually we got around to the subject of food (As most time on a boat goes with either reading or eating, the conversation is just bound to cross these two subjects at one point or another.) and baking (one of my favorites). And I told her about my experiments with baking in a pressure cooker, and before I knew of it I was telling her that I would come around to their boat the day after and show her how it worked. Being slightly drunk I did come up with the idea that I could just swim to their boat……………..no problemo!

At the top Happy Hour at the Hallelujah
Below Saying goodbye to Irish and the infamous Hallelujah bar

Not sure what I had been thinking of, but one thing was for sure it wasn’t thought through, which I realized the day after. After all I had no intentions of standing baking in a boat wearing little more than a mermaid, so I abandoned that idea. Instead went in the dinghy and arrived dry shoed to a baking session that resulted in a lovely Irish soda bread, and a foccia that was left to rise for 3 hours so that we would not miss the Hallelujah happyhour.

The morning after (yesterday) the baking session I was rather interested in how the bread had turned out. And with the knowledge of their Irish background and a general European pride in our dairy products, I duck deep down in our fridge and located one of our many packages of Irish butter. The butter spread joy, and to my luck and in this case not Irish luck, I got to share a lovely morning on their boat Aragon, stuffing myself with good bread, tea and fun stories from Ireland and their life. And I have to agree with Pat and Catherine, Irish butter is just so much better.