Another Milestone Reached - 3 months out!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to us!!!  Three months ago today we left our boat slip in Boca Raton, FL and headed out on this awesome adventure.  It’s strange.  Even though this is now our reality and we’ve settled into the routine of our sailing life, it still seems so temporary to me at times.  I guess we’ve just wanted this life for so long, having it a reality seems a little unreal.  We are grateful for every day of this amazing life we get to experience!

Last night, before the winds picked up, Larry had taken down our mainsail and packaged it up to transport to shore.  We’re glad he did.  This morning, the winds howled at about 30 knots and it would have made the job considerably more difficult. 

See our bare boom … no sail L

We took the sail to St. Maarten Sails.  At first, it seemed like they wouldn’t have time to do the repair.  They were busy even though this is the slow season.  Their first estimate of time was 3-weeks.  OUCH!!!  There is no way we can hang around here for 3-weeks.  We really need to head south out of the major hurricane area before we end up regretting it.  We told them, if it couldn’t be done within the week, we’d have to look elsewhere.  The guy said if he could get it done today or tomorrow, he would do so.  Otherwise, he had a large job coming in tomorrow afternoon and his entire week would be spent on that job.  We left the sail with him in hopes that it will be done.  We will check back tomorrow.  The ‘informal’ quote for the repair is $250.  We’re a little nervous because we’re taking their word on that amount.  Don’t know what we’ll do if it turns out to be too much more.  It is in really rough shape.  The material itself is breaking down … thus the reason for all the fixes that need to be done.  They are only fixing the area where it shredded.  We will probably have further issues in other areas of the sail.  Sooner, rather than later, we will need to replace it completely … soooo, we don’t want to spend too much money on a basic bandaid!

The sail place is directly across the street from Island Water World so we’d left our dinghy at their dock and simply carried the sail across the street.  There are a couple of neat boating stores here, similar to West Marine.  They are Island Water World and Budget Marine.  We checked them both out and spent a couple hundred dollars on various necessities.  We bought a second anchor for the dinghy.  We’ve found that a lot of times, we need to anchor the dinghy on shore.  It would be much better if we could also drop a stern anchor to hold the dinghy off the beach.  Otherwise, the surf just pushes it up onto the sand.  If there are other boats around, we are afraid our little boat will get punctured/torn just like that dinghy in the Bahamas.  It was a lesson well learned at someone else’s expense.

We also bought two charts for the islands and coast of Venezuela.  We don’t have paper charts for that area so these will help supplement our electronic charts.  We also bought a book of cruising Panama.  It was expensive but seems to have a lot of information on the coastlines and canal crossing.  As I was flipping through the book today, I was getting more excited about this area.  There are hundreds of tiny islands offshore the eastern coast that we could spend months exploring! 

We also bought a new US Flag.  The one we bought just before we left Fort Lauderdale is now shredded from the excessive winds L

At Budget Marine we bought some shock cord (bungee material) that we will use to install the lee clothes that I’d made.  We tried attaching the first one with simple string but it doesn’t seem to hold it tight and it flaps a lot in the wind.  We’re hoping the shock cord will be a better answer.

We went to Lagoonies Restaurant/Bar for Happy Hour.  Presidente beers were $1 each but it turned out it was only between 5-6pm.  Between 6-7 (still Happy Hour), the beer were $2 each.   They had seafood croquettes for $1/each so we got two.  Unfortunately, they were very creamy and Larry tasted them but couldn’t eat his.  We ordered a deviled egg appetizer that had tuna mixed with the egg.  Very different!  Our total bill (including tip) was $18 … not too bad for dinner/drinks and internet.

 

 The main reason we went there was to see about their internet.  We’re sitting not far off their dock and occasionally we can pick up their signal.  We just needed their password.  Unfortunately, it barely worked in the restaurant so I’m sure we won’t be able to get it on the boat!  At least I was able to upload some pictures to Facebook.