23rd December


19 55 N
70 56 W

Weather: sunny, wind picking up in the late afternoon, waves n/a

2 MORE SLEEPS START TO PANIC IF YOU ARENT READY!

WISHING MY YOUNGEST BROTHER DAVID A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SENDING LOVE AND BEST WISHES FOR A GREAT YEAR AHEAD.

When I woke up Gerry was already outside fiddling, in our hurry to furl away the stay sail yesterday one of the sheets had frayed at the end and come undone so Gerry was out on deck with the staysail out and was retying the sheet to the sail. It was a great time to do it as the was absolutely no breath of wind to be had. The entire harbor seemed to be still asleep at 7 am. The silence was deafening! Gerry even took 2 photos of the sunrise which turned out quite beautiful. We cooked up some breakfast and made coffee to enjoy the start of the day undisturbed by anything.
Our mooring owner Palo, came by and we asked for a delivery of 50 Gallons of drinking water, he returned within 10 mins with the delivery. It came in the sealed, 5 gallon water cooler containers that every office in the world seems to have at a princely sum of .70 US cents per 5 Gallons! Just 2 x 500ml bottles of water at the airport cost us more than that - what a bargain!
Gerry got the funnel out and emptied the containers into our water tanks, at that price it's cheaper to buy from Palo than it is for us to run our onboard water maker (not that we wanted to run it in this harbor anyway - who knows what nasties are in the harbor water!)
At about 10am everyone suddenly seemed to surface and dinghies began zipping about in the harbor. We had been told that the veggie van visits Puerto Blanco marina, where we ate last night, 3 times a week and today was one of the days. We decided to check it out and went to the marina but there was no sign of the veggie van, apparently, he runs to "Island Time" and would be there in the next half to one hour's time, maybe. We decided not to wait as we also planned on going into the town to see if we could get a phone card for internet data plus we had also learnt that there were places in town to get veggies. The town dinghy dock is at the opposite end of the harbor so we zipped across, tied up to the rickety dinghy dock and walked into town. I snapped a few photos on the way which I'll try to get into the blog gallery over the next couple of days. We found Wendy's, a popular bar with the current yachties and asked for directions to the veggie shops and the phone company and
then made our way up the street to each in turn, starting with the airconditioned phone shop - could easily have stayed there longer in the cool but we had veggies to buy. We found the shop that had been recommended and stocked up with most of what we needed then asked for directions to the bakery which we had fond memories of from our last visit. Sadly it is no longer in existence as the owner had died - no fresh pan aqua. The rest of the town is vastly improved from our last visit here, there are all sorts of shops but everything is on village scale so you have to try all of them to get everything you want. We found other bread in the supermarkets but it wasn't the same as the bakery stuff we were looking forward to, not to mention the pastries that the bakery used to produce! We struggled to find butter, everywhere had margarine but it wasn't what we wanted so we left it for the time being and headed back towards the dinghy as our backpacks were full of veggies and eggs and getting heavier by the second. We stopped at Wendy's for a cold drink and the possibility of some lunch, it turned out that it is more bar than cafŽe despite their advertising but they could get you food and anyone in the area would deliver it to Wendy's for you, so Gerry asked for some French fries and sure enough they were delivered shortly afterwards - I wasn't hungry so just helped myself to a few off of his plate. We asked if anyone in the bar knew where we could get butter, ask and you shall receive! A truck pulled up outside the bar and we were able to buy butter and cheese directly from the driver who was delivering to the local shops! After finishing the fries and our drinks we headed back to the dinghy and took our purchases back to our boat and stashed them away. It was by now time for a nana nap and Gerry has been snoring his head off whilst I've been emailing, downloading the pictures from the camera onto the computer and typing this blog.
The wind has gotten up this afternoon and we are getting a good breeze through the boat so it's quite pleasant at the moment. We are going to go into the Puerto Blanco Marina for dinner tonight and let someone else do the cooking. This is the marina that was the yacht club when we were here last time around. Two sad losses that we noted today have been the original yacht club up on the hill above Puerto Blanco Marina - it was a beautiful building which has been left to fall into disrepair and looks more like ruins than a useable building now, the dock which we tied up to in the past to go up there has totally vanished and the mangroves have grown up hiding the just visible stairway up to the building. Second loss is the closing of Steve's Place - it was THE place for all yachties to go for good cheap food, laundry service, free WIFI and anything that you couldn't find to buy Steve seemed to be able to procure with a day's notice. When we asked what had happened to the place we were told that Steve sold up about 4 years ago and moved elsewhere, the new owners couldn't make a profit on the place so it closed as a business - very sad!
It's almost time to go ashore. So that's my lot for today.