Even though the loud music occasionally woke me up, I got a good night’s sleep and awoke early. After doing last night’s dishes and uploading yesterday’s blog entry I had the Dutch patrol boat behind me asking if they could do a security inspection. As they were quite friendly it all I could do but accede to their request and two officers boarded and asked for my papers. They were still in the waterproof container and the junior officer got to do all the writing. After a couple of innocuous questions the senior officer asked to see my safety equipment and I showed them my extinguishers and vests below but couldn’t for the life of me remember where I had put the flares. We agreed that this wasn’t good, since I might only have seconds to use them in case of emergency and I was about to delve in my bilge when I remembered that I kept them close to the steering station. We went topsides and I pulled out the flare box and they had (just) expired, but the officer gave me a warning and I’ll head out to Budget tomorrow to get new ones. Seconds later they were gone – a fast and efficient cursory inspection.
Shortly after the authorities left I was paid a visit by Andy and Marie to complete the work on gluing the panels. I’d taped the panels closed the night before to ensure that had any rain come down it wouldn’t get under the panels before they were sealed and we removed those strips and in short order Andy had completed the caulking work, we needed a half-hour break to wait for the inner strip to get tack enough so that we could to the opposite side but after that the work was complete. Now all that’s left is for me to get (and pay) the bill.
I had to go ashore to refresh my internet access (although I paid access hasn’t been restored yet, so I am doing my updates offline until I can go to a store and can sort this out) and get some shopping done at the little Chinese store across from Barnacle’s dinghy dock. That was my major trip off the boat today, although I do plan on heading ashore and trying out Topper’s tonight for the first time.
I headed off to the SMYC at 17:00 to socialize a bit and Mark came by after 18:00 to join in the conversation and libations. After the pre-prandial drinks we walked to Topper’s down the road and I was tempted by their filet mignon special while Mark went for the lobster. We shared a bottle of red wine to wash down our respective meals. All in all the food was much better than I had expected and I’ll certainly be going back there again.
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