19th December

12 00 N
61 46 W

Weather; sunny, wind n/a, waves n/a

What sort of time of day is this to be out of bed, washed and dressed, breakfast eaten, bags ready to go and we are in the dinghy - its 8.15, a time when most cruisers don't even want to know its daytime! We have to have the car returned by 10am so we didn't have too much time to do the dashing around this morning but we were determined to see if we could find the Grenada specific Christmas ornaments plus Gerry wanted to see if he could get himself a new pair of shoes as the ones he has been wearing are just about to walk out and throw themselves overboard with no help from me (honestly) . Whilst we were in the direction I thought we could also check out IGA to see if they had restocked their potatoes as what we have on the boat won't last for more than a couple of meals and we need to put fuel in the car before it is picked up. We all arrived at the dock at the same time and quickly took off in the car, the first stop was to top off the car with fuel as the garage is on the outgoing side of the divided highway, not on the return side. From there we made our way to the mall, the smaller shops weren't open as yet but IGA was open so we dived in there first and yes they had new boxes of potatoes, just what we needed. I made Gerry walk all around the shop picking up other bits and pieces that were on my list from yesterday but not on the shelves then, I think he escaped very lightly all up! Once that stuff was back in the car the rest of the mall was opening up and Lorie and I went in search of the ornaments whilst the guys lazed around on the seats outside. We found a couple of ornaments each and made our purchases, I had to grab some cash from Gerry and his ID to get the stuff duty free, I'm not sure it was worth the effort but I have my Grenada souvenirs now! It was now time for Gerry to go to the shoe store and see what he could find whilst Lorie and I waited in the airconditioned car. The guys were soon back with Gerry having found a cheap pair of throw away shoes - it was a successful mission all round. We arrived back at the dock with time to spare on the car hire, Dale and Lorie went straight out to their boat but Gerry wanted to get something from Budget Marine whilst I waited outside in the sun. He was gone forever, I was beginning to wonder what on earth he was buying Ð the entire store maybe? When he reappeared he had just one small bag, it had apparently taken him this long to find just one small dinghy light which was in this bag. I hadn't known he was getting a new light but last night when we returned to the boat we had one out of two dinghy nav lights that were working. Gerry had plans to take those original nav lights apart, replace the batteries and change one out for a new solar light. When we got back to the boat and he took the old lights apart he discovered that one of them had battery acid leaking out which needed throwing away and as he unscrewed the second one the thing broke and made it unusable - in one easy go we now only had the new solar light - as long as that one works we are OK! To make sure that the new light works he set about sticking it onto the top of the outboard cover, as it is currently sunny the hope that the battery gets charged and the light works or we will be looking for another alternative sooner rather than later. We pigged out on the dumplings that we bought yesterday - yum oh and have saved the sushi for tonight's dinner.
The rest of the afternoon was spent with me getting the blog edited and uploaded for the last couple of days whilst Gerry watched some sailing video stuff. Incidentally the F1 racing season might be over but it has been replaced in Gerryville with videos of the America's cup sailing teams having some races around New Zealand in their wiz bang foil yachts doing speeds of up to 49MPH which leaves no room for errors of any sort. Lorie and I are in agreement that this shouldn't be called yacht racing - they don't look anything like a yacht to us but the guys are fascinated by the speed that they manage to achieve as they fly across the top of the water barely getting wet and think that this is the way to go!
So today's advent photo is of something everyone knows about but has possibly never seen - this is our radar dome which allows us to see all around us picking up ships, birds, weather and aliens when it is switched on. When we are underway we don't run the radar all the time but if it is particularly dark or we are concerned that there may be bad weather which we want to track and avoid it gets switched on and we do a scan as frequently as necessary. To a greater extent it is somewhat supplemented these days by AIS (Automatic Identification System) for tracking vessels, which ships above a certain tonnage have to have by law. A lot of smaller boats, particularly sailing yachts like ours, also have this system installed as it allows other ships and boats to be able to know that there is a vessel, what that vessel's name, tonnage, length, destination, speed and heading are. It also gives the distance to CPA (closest point of approach) and also TCPA (time to closest point of approach) which should prevent accidental collisions at sea. In addition to ships and boats having AIS, in some places channel markers and /or buoys have them as well making it easy to see if any of the markers or buoys have been recently moved.