We have had a great couple of days here, the weather has been beautiful – warm with a nice breeze and we now have the boat ready to sail this morning. Sunday night we were on Sea Rover with Mike and Devala and they along with James from Nimrod came to us for drinks and food last night. Anita developed here own cocktail based on Pina Colada and Rum which raised everyone’s spirits at high speed. Potato skins with dips went down with little effort and it was ten thirty before we realised it. We moved berth yesterday morning as Adam on Wild Thing had a charter and headed south allowing us to use his berth to lift our dinghy onto the davits and secure the after end for sea. David Skill turned up early on and we took him on for the day to do some final cleaning of the paintwork. We still have a rust stain developing on the starboard bow which needs some TLC from John but that can wait until we are in a quiet anchorage as it need to be attacked from the dinghy. The anchor came up reasonably clean thanks to having been ranged and hydro blasted two weeks ago whilst we were out of the water to have he transponder replaced. Sea Rover is stuck here for the moment as she is waiting for some electrical warranty spares to arrive from the UK. Both Nimrod and Sea Rover are new boats and very different to Osprey. Interestingly both have Generator/ Electrical problems. Whilst there is no logical reason that we have yet identified, we have concluded over the past couple of years that the US based 110 volt system seems to be better suited to boats than the European 240 volt system.

We may decide to stop at anchor in St Marten on the way up to the BVI – at lot will depend on how fast we travel and what time we arrive there.  If it works out we might spend the night at anchor and conclude the passage the following day. Weather forecasts for the UK are dire at present with a very deep low pressure building up along with gale force winds. What a contrast to the environment we are in here.