Yes, we’re still in St Maarten, but the refit is now officially over so we will soon be on our way – once the wind either softens, or moves away from the south-east, which we hope will be at the weekend.

Our anchor chain arrived this morning, heaped up on a workboat driven by two of the boatyard guys. We untied our bitter end and fed our anchor and old chain down on to the workboat; then the inboard end of the new chain was passed up to us, we fed it through the windlass gypsy, tied our bitter end in, and then brought in the rest of the chain, marveling at its shininess. Our anchor then got re-shackled and wired to the outboard end of the new chain and winched up to the pulpit, and off the guys went with our old chain. Thank heavens for an electric windlass. So, what to do with ten-year-old anchor chain? We offered it for sale through the ‘SXM buy and sell’ Facebook page, but the one taker for it discovered it wouldn’t fit. However, Eddie – who, regular readers will remember, installed our watermaker – needs some chain for his boat mooring, so it is going to a good home.

While we waited for the chain, G cut K’s hair, sitting on the sugar scoop. Not sure who was the more nervous…

The very last item on the agenda is the re-make of our ten-year-old spray-hood whose every seam needs re-stitched due to sun damage (if it does that to the spray hood, heaven knows what it does to us). We’ve been advised by Rob, the sail-maker, that this is probably its last go-around: next time it needs a service, we’ll be looking at a whole new spray-hood. And so starts the list for the next refit….

With our refurbished spray hood back on and our new solar panels hooked up, we have left IWW and moved to anchor. We will likely head south in a couple of days. More details of our route plan in our next blog.