Sleep this past night was a pleasure – no rocking and rolling and creaking or untoward movement of the boat! I had my “Q” flag raised and dinghied in to shore for the walk to the Customs & Immigration offices in English Harbour (the next one over). These offices are housed in the historic sheds at the historic Nelson’s Dockyard (the oldest working docks this side of the Atlantic). Clearing in here was always a chore as one had to fill in detailed address & passport information on several different forms several times, going from one desk to the next and then back to the starting point with a handful of paperwork. They’ve now started using a new computerized system called eSeaClear and have set up a new room with 3 terminals and a helpful staff for those who haven’t done the clearance from their own PC elsewhere. Once the pages are filled in one gets a clearance number with which one goes to the Customs & Immigration offices and they print out about 8 documents for you to sign and then you perform the same steps as before, but no more writing and the whole procedure is certainly much more streamlined and efficient.
Subsequently I returned to the boat and attacked some of the open chores – getting the port running light functioning, running the wires to the cockpit LED assembly and replacing the radio instrument panel. I started with the latter project and got everything set up and marked for cutting the new wooden panel. I’d purchased a complete set of Dremel tools including the cool cutter which Bill Trayfors had used when setting up the panel originally. Unfortunately, these tools are 100V 60Hz and I’d purchased a small 600W inverter which overloaded when I turned on the tools to the low power setting! In the end I gave up and decided to get the work done ashore tomorrow.
The running light project also got started but not finished, as it turns out that the wiring has an issue (there aren’t 12 or 24V going to the cabling) and it was getting close to happy hour and dinner ashore time, so I postponed that task as well – after losing an uncaptured nut to the sea and I’ll have to get a replacement for that tomorrow as well.
Happy hour and dinner was at the Mad Mongoose ashore, I met a very nice lady from Italy crewing aboard one of the mega yachts in order to save up enough cash to pay for her PolySci internship somewhere. Life aboard one of those mega yachts is not as glamorous or luxurious (for the crew) as one might assume.
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