Busy Days

Yesterday, Ron and Jorgen, who is the captain of the 40 boat behind us attempted to put on our head sail and something went awry and snapped one of the lines off the furler. Ron ended up spending most of the day looking into how to fix it and Olivia and I took the local bus into Philipsburg and had a great half day shopping for a few more things we needed. After we got back, Ron was ready for a break so we all hopped into the dingy and decided to venture out of the Dutch part of the lagoon over to the French side. What a great outing! We never got out of the dingy, but we could still feel that it really has a completely different culture and atmosphere. Beautiful little seaside cafes and pubs and other shops. We even ventured out of the bridge and couldn't believe how many boats were at anchor in the harbour. How beautiful it was there. We could easily see Anguilla, which will be our first destination whenever we have the boat ready enough to go somewhere. On our way back in through the French bridge, Ron temporarily forgot he was in a no wake waterway and he smoked it right past the harbour cops who quickly gave us a stern warning in French. We have no idea what they were saying, but we got the impression that we shouldn't make the same mistake twice.

We're slowly getting into the unhurried groove of things here. Today, Ron fixed the furling rig while I finished wiping down and oiling every square inch of the interior of the boat and the two of us worked together to put up the head sail and we were really quite proud of it when we were finished. Ron started to work on the main sail while O and I went to the UTS store to get a sim card for the 2nd cell phone we bought. This afternoon, we all got back in the dingy and paid Lindsay a visit to pay the balance for some work his guys did painting the boat bottom, then went to a beach on the french side for a nice swim and cool down. Dinner was at a local Chinese restaurant and we ordered way too much food. Unlike at home, every dish you order seems to come with rice or potatoes and veggies. We ordered 3 dishes when we really could have ordered just one. Olivia and I are currently sharing the master bunk until Ron sets up a lee cloth to keep her from falling out of her bunk – falling 3 feet down to a wooden floor once is enough. Today will be laundry day so slugging a basket full of laundry up the street to a laundromat in 30 degree heat should be a real treat. Today and tomorrow we plan to start buffing the hull and topsides which are quite oxidized and is a job that neither of us is looking forward to, but have to get done. Crap...where's the deck hands when you need em?