6 July 2011
We knew Whit would come back - he had to to collect his extensive library of Lonely Planet travel guides he left behind whilst travelling through Costa Rica. Monday and all of Tuesday consisted of getting the boat ship-shape again for going to sea. We feel we have finally made it as an ocean going vessel, now we have a huge bunch of green bananas hanging up in the cockpit. Despite the fact that we we won't be able to eat them for two weeks and then they will all ripen at the same time, we still wanted to buy them as they were pretty cheap, as were most of the other fruit and veg we bought at the farmers market in Santa Cruz. Cheap compared to Jersey, obviously, maybe not to other countries. So, we have a boat load of fruit and veg, most of our dry provisions were already on and a very kind restaurant froze 6 of our meals for us that I had prepared earlier (eat your heart out Blue Peter!) Although we don't have a freezer, we have a freezer box that Mark has made and so hopefully they should keep cool for a little while. And so we set sail at 1800 on 5 July. Other boats had had problems retrieving one or other of their anchors, so we were prepared for the worst, but were pleased that neither anchor gave us jip and we were heading out before the sun had set. A knackering day by all accounts as all our water had to be put into tanks by jerry can and with no prop on our outboard motor, we had to befriend a water taxi for most of the afternoon.
So now it's the morning of the 6th; the big boys are snoozing, I've been on the SSB net and made contact with other boats and the kids are reading, we've got a couple of knots of current in our favour and whilst the waves are slightly forward of our beam, we've 15-20 knots of wind so are making a respectable 6-7 knots boat speed. Current position: 01.19.62S 91.48.68W