21/04/09 - 14.28.00N 60.52.00W

Flying Cloud
Julian Nichols
Tue 21 Apr 2009 09:08


Hey there,
We've had a pretty packed Wednesday... It started with me up at 7am taking all our (6 x 505 amp Rolls) service batteries, so that at 8:30 the sparky could re-do the connections... This because I'd detected some nasty warming of cables when we did long charges. As soon as he got going and I could leave him, I went and visited French customs: A mostly painless experience, they've a new computerized system which meant for once I wasn't harassed for my beautiful penmanship! The only problem was that despite my getting him to ring his superior, he still flat out said I didn't need/ couldn't have a copy of my clearance (needed to clear our new generator and watermaker) into the country... After that, a quick stop at the marina office to register, then on over to the engineers to give them a copy of our boat papers, and to be told that they would find out from DHL what exactly I was to do about my lack of a clearance copy... A few small errands later: stopping at the sailmakers for the pares I was going to get in St Martin, picking up a Martinique SIM card, +596 6169299, and replacing my broken sunglasses (my eyes were already hurting at 9am). The rest of the day went more smoothly, with Jenny putting away all the family stuff, and sorting out as much as she could and getting distracted by all sorts of odd jobs I added to her day. I spent my day dancing between fault finding the Raymarine E series, working with the sparky, and working with the engineer doing the prep work for the desal plant... Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a Schizophrenic, and so am I! We're just sitting down for tea now at half seven, as I've just finished putting the batts back in so we could cook... Absolutely starving!

Dinner's now over, Jenny cooked up some lovely food with the odd bits of veg etc. left over, and I've now written a todo list for her before she heads over to St Martin to pick up our stuff tomorrow: After looking over the various options, it's turned out most economical to send her there and pick it up... Not to mention the only method that seems sure to work given our timescale. Speaking of her todo list, I've been a bit optimistic, as her eyes kind of grew and grew as I wrote it.
As far as lists go, mine is still blown up out of proportion, but on the bright side I'm sure it'll give Jules and the boys something todo whilst they're chomping at the bits raring to leave while the engineer is doing his best to accomplish the near-impossible one week turnover...
Bye for now, I'm about to jump into my tool room and start coming up with the necessary mods to the tow gen to make it retractable!

Matt