I’m finally seeing headway in getting the boat ready for travelling again – it is quite a bit more work getting prepared and ship-shape than the smaller boat. I had a well-known local guy called Vernon come by to clean the cockpit and decks and subsequently also do the topsides (the vertical surfaces of the hull). He is a fixture and has his “secret” recipe which he hopes to patent one day, except that everyone at the docks knows what it consists of, but he does very good and particularly careful work and is worth every penny of his wages. It was a bit of work, but I managed to get the bimini and dodger set up alone. I met a British/Australian couple who had purchased an ex-charter Bénéteau 42 and that put them in the same category as my first boat (an ex-sunsail charter Jeanneau 43) and I invited them over for happy-hour drinks around sunset and we ended up going below as some showers moved in and I wanted to show off the advantages of air-conditioning. They brought over some Murphy’s Irish Stout (with a built-in widget similar to that in canned Guinness) and it tasted incredible – but as I’d not eaten all day it also packed quite a bit of punch!
The “Tree of Shame” pictured below is a shrine to propellers that have given their life in duty against the reefs of the BVI and the memorial grows each time I visit. I hope that none of my propellers ends up there.
 |  |  |