Today was the long awaited Jumble Sale fundraiser for the Sunshine School, so I was up and about early since I wanted to be ashore by 8:30. After usual morning duties of running the engine and preparing the boat to be unattended for most of the day again, I climbed into the dinghy and motored into town on another sunny and very warm day.
We were all meeting at the almond tree in the heart of town where the sale was to take place, so today the central hub of Bequia’s taxi stand was being replaced by the Sunshine School Jumble and Book Sale. We roped off the sale areas and hung large signs made from sheets from the almond trees so they could be seen from the Belmont Walkway and from town. Soon the taxis arrived with the items from the school for the sale – it took about 3 or 4 of them to carry it all.
Marianne and Lisa and I had worked again at the school for about 4 hours yesterday to sort and price the remaining items. We had lugged all the merchandise
up from the hot and stuffy basement of the school into the yard, then moved it in shifts into the school's open air atrium upstairs where we could work in the shade and enjoy a bit of breeze. It was quite an assortment of items: lots clothing of all sizes and shapes, photo frames, rugs, wraps, placemats, candle holders and knickknacks, shoes and hats and belts, household appliances like coffee makers and telephones and radios, hand-painted clothing donated by a local artist, and just pretty much everything else you could imagine. We had also acquired several tables full of books of all varieties – mysteries, historical, romance, adventure, self-help – you name it and we had a book about it. It had filled the atrium in the school and as it was unloaded from the taxis it created quite a large pile of donated items. 
Unfortunately there was some type of hiccup with the tables and they arrived about an hour after everything else --and not as many as we expected. So that was a bit of a scramble to get the merchandise out, especially since people were already starting to wander into the roped area in search of the best bargains long before our 11 am start time. It was hot work because the breeze was light today and it appeared to be a cloudless slate blue sky, so the sun beat down upon us rather relentlessly as we worked.
Including setup time, we worked solidly from about 9:30 until 1pm. My primary area was manning the clothes and trying to keep them hanging on the makeshift racks we devised by running rope
between a nearby Landcruiser and an almond tree. I used clothes pins to keep the hangers from sliding down the natural curve that developed from the weight of the heavier clothes -- it's amazing how much you can do with just very basic supplies if you're resourceful.I picked up a few small things for myself at quite a bargain: a cute azure-colored sleeveless shirt that reminds me of the water here with an adorable turtle on the pocket, and 4 books including a DeMille and John MacDonald (favorite authors for both Tim and myself). Sailors are known for always being in search of books since reading seems to be a favorite pastime of cruisers and bareboaters. We keep a library of paperbacks on the boat for ourselves and guests,
so we could add these to our collection. Finally at 1:00, we offered everything remaining for ½ price, and then finally at 2 we started to pack up the remaining items and loaded them onto a taxi (it only took one for the return trip), and finally we were done for the day.After saying goodbye to everyone I headed immediately to the dinghy because I was feeling pretty dusty and exhausted. I’d been
fighting a slight case of a stomach bug that appeared to be going around, and lack of food and the heat left me feeling quite weak. After returning to SJ I went for a cool-down swim, and then after a cold shower below I just rested on the boat the rest of the day and drank lots of water to replace the fluids I had sweated away during the manual labor at the sale. I turned in around 10 and was soon asleep.
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