21st December

12 00 N
61 46 W

Weather; rain showers, wind n/a, waves n/a

We woke up to a very overcast sort of day, it had rained on and off all night - our water tanks were full to overflowing, we could have more than one shower today, as long as we heated up the water!
Gerry took our trash ashore in the dinghy before it got to the point of being stinky, he picked up Lorie to go along for the ride as she needed to go to the yard office to change out a tee shirt for a different size. Gerry was also going to stop in at the sailmakers, again, to see if he could get a quote for a cover for our dodger window to replace the one we lost in the big blow that we had whilst we were in quarantine. If you recall he tried a couple of days ago to just buy the canvas and I would have made up the cover but they would only make us a cover, not sell us the canvas and the guy who did the quotes wasn't there that day so it was a retry today.
On the good news front, our water maker warranty part has arrived in Grenada, we had a call this morning from the customs clearing agent, there is just one small problem - the invoice shows no value as it is a warranty part and customs wont clear it without a value. Gerry has had to contact the company to ask for another invoice showing the value plus the fact that it is a warranty part at no cost to us - I'm sure we will still have to pay some sort of duty on it anyway but at least it is in the country! Having gone back and forward with a few emails they have finally gotten it sorted out and with any luck our part should be cleared and ready for pick up tomorrow afternoon. Of course there is duty to pay on it even though it is a "free" warranty part plus there is the agent's clearing fee, not to worry - it's only money after all! At this point I have to commend the water company manufacturer, Parker Hannifin, who have been just terrific in their handling of the replacement part for us, despite the fact that UPS totally stuffed up the "overnight delivery" which would have seen Dale bringing the part back from Florida, then having to have the part returned to California before sending it onwards to Grenada. They have given us great, prompt service and exceeded our expectations of them, so if you are looking for a water maker company please consider them. It continued to rain on and off (more on than off) for the rest of the day, preventing Gerry from finding any more jobs outside of the cabin so we made the most of it and watched a movie in the afternoon, of course that meant that we had to have snacks at the same time - not a good thing as we will be eating far too much over the next few days as it is anyway. The rain left off for just long enough that we could have our 5o'clock drinks in the cockpit - wet bums all round as the seats were soaked but who cares!
I made a treacle tart in the afternoon, no particular reason for it, I just had the need to do it and stupidly used a recipe that I had never used before. The tart is OK - just, but it's not a recipe that I would repeat, I'll go back to how mum used to make it if I do it again! Gerry added his 2 pennyworth of comment - it wasn't like the tart that his grandmother made either so he won't be getting any more in future unless he can reproduce his grandmother's recipe complete with lattice work pastry top (she was a wonderful baker and had far too much time on her hands!) My dad would have enjoyed it though, as any dessert containing treacle (actually golden syrup) was always his favourite.
So on to today's advent photo. I got to thinking yesterday about our other signaling devices after talking about the communications stuff, so in today's photo you can see 5 other signaling things that we have on board.
On the left side of the photo is our air (or fog) horn - it's very loud and would frighten the life out of anyone close by if we sounded it. Then in the middle is our whistle to ward off robbers and alert the police that we need help, beneath that is a mirror for blinding pilots in low flying planes with. The bell is meant to be hanging in a spot just above our EPIRB with the clangor in situ but it makes such a noise when the boat rolls that we removed the clangor and keep the shell in the Nav station cupboard where we can easily access it if necessary and let's be honest you can hit it with just about anything to make it sound the alarm. The final bit of signaling equipment is a high powered torch with a laser pointer so that it can be aimed at something and light it up (usually the sails) for anyone to see. All of these things might seem a bit frivolous and unnecessary given the rest of safety gear that our boat is equipped with, however these things are a requirement of the US ( and probably other country's) coast guards as we found out back when we did our last trip home and were boarded for safety inspection - we had everything then too and they ticked it all off on their check list and issued us with a safety certificate at the time. We hope that we never need to use any of them but we know from experience that the torch with the laser pointer comes in particularly handy when you need to "spotlight" channel markers on the way into a harbor/ marina and it is a pitch black night. So that's it for today, I hope it's at least a little enlightening and settles some of the nerves that you might have about us undertaking this trip.