Marigot Bay: The Bay of Flies

Flies are perhaps the most disgusting and dirty creatures on the planet, in my opinion.  Worse than cockroaches, I think.  I detest them and their presence - especially on a boat.  Luckily, we don't deal with flies too much out here and I honestly can't remember the last time we had a real problem with them.  In fact, I don't think we have ever had so many flies aboard our boat as we did this past week in Marigot Bay.  We have good reason to believe that this recent influx has everything to do with bad timing (we've been here twice before and never experienced this problem); it's been incredibly rainy, warm and we're pretty sure our visit has coincided with a mating season of sorts (we'll spare you the details).  As such, our boat has been overrun - literally completely abuzz - with an insane number of flies the first morning we awoke, and every morning to late afternoon that followed (they seem to "go to sleep" around dusk).  It was unbelievable and almost unbearable.  They were everywhere.

Being the person I am, I immediately hit the internet to find some solutions.  I am here to report that eucalyptus oil, peppermint oil and hanging bags filled with water (with and without pennies) do not work.  At all.  None of these "deterrents" put even the tiniest dent in our growing fly colony.  What I did discover was that they seem to hate bleach and as such, our boat has never been so clean.  Keeping the screens up, food stuff covered, and a mosquito net over our companionway also seemed to keep them at bay.   In addition, Scott miraculously found a single roll of fly tape (with sticky stuff that must have been developed by NASA) tucked deep within a drawer and, after three full days, it has now accumulated over sixty flies.  It's like Christmas every morning when we do the daily fly count and discover we've captured more than the day before.  I know, we're sick.

So yeah.  It's been a little Lord of the Flies around here lately...moving on to Rodney Bay shortly then...Martinique!