5th January

12 00 N
61 46 W

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

We woke up to showers this morning but they quickly vanished and the day became sunny and pleasant. Again there wasn't a great deal on our agenda for the day, we could kick back and relax for the day, unless your name is Gerry of course. One of the first things he asked me today was did I want a job, I gave my stock standard answer of no and then he proceeded to tell me what the job was. He was wondering if I wanted to do some varnishing (who in their right mind wants to do varnishing?), I let it ride for a while - there was no way I wanted to go outside and do varnishing in the sun but when I eventually gave in and asked what he wanted varnishing it turned out to be the window frame inside the boat as, where the condensation had gathered, the varnish had worn away leaving patches of bare wood. It didn't appear to be too hard a job but would require some sanding before I could apply a coat or two. Meanwhile Gerry had vanished outside and was doing something to the windows (in case you are wondering they are the fixed windows and not the openable portlights, which is why I've used the term window and not portlight)with a screw driver. When he reappeared he had the head of a screw in hand - it had apparently rusted out leaving the main part of the screw in the wood and would need drilling out and replacing. I'm not even sure why he was looking at it in the first place - maybe trying to prevent leaks, but he proceeded to check all of the screws and tighten them down. Out came the drill and he drilled out the offending broken screw, of course we didn't have a screw the right size - millions to choose from, but never the right one so it was the excuse to go into Budget Marine for his daily dose of shopping. I asked him to get a new sanding block to be able to sand the inside of the windows with as our old one was well past it's use by date and needed putting out of its misery. So off he went and shortly after arrived back with the necessary items to do the jobs - no sanding blocks though, just some sheets of sand paper which are going to have to do. The new screw was put in place and the next thing I know he's off over to Gypsy Palace with our wet and dry vacuum as Dale needed to borrow it to do a job that required a wet and dry vacuum and they don't have one so needed to borrow ours. This put paid to me doing the sanding today as I needed to be able to vacuum the sanding dust as I went unless I wanted it everywhere in the salon area. So for the moment my sanding and varnishing job is on hold, not that it will keep me busy for very long once I start it. When he came back he had a handful of Navionics charts belonging to Dale which he will not require as they aren't going to be making the rest of the trip with us. Gerry was going to see if they would work in our chart plotter (we couldn't be sure as they might only work in chart plotter that is registered to Dale) and if they worked we would buy them off of Dale rather than wait for them to arrive as a special order from the USA. Back on our boat Gerry fiddled around with changing out the chips in our chart plotter and found that 2 of them worked with no problem, the 3rd one was a bit "Iffy", taking time to load etc. the chart that was a bit iffy was the very first one we will need, to get us to Panama, the good charts were the ones for the pacific islands and Australia. I'm sure there will be some negotiations over the next few days for the charts as they will never be any use to Dale as he plans on selling their boat as soon as they return to the USA - it's sadly never going to be doing a trip in the Pacific/Australia areas. Mid- afternoon Gerry spotted a "pirate ship" entering the harbor and heading towards the boat yard. It was Norwegian flagged and looked to be made entirely of wood, I yelled at him to take a photo which is what you can see at the top of this blog, it isn't the best photo as it was snapped on his phone from the companionway and although I've cut out a lot of the "clutter" it still has bits of the stern of our boat evident in the picture - he tried bless his heart! The rest of the afternoon was spent doing very little, prepping our dinner for the night and making cocktails for our sunset ritual which was now so much more pleasant as our "new dinghy"- the boat that anchored too close for comfort , was no longer blocking our view. Our turtles still haven't put an appearance back in though, no one has informed them that their playground is empty once again. So that was our day - again not exciting but we were given a glimmer of hope today as the reports are out that the restaurants and bars are to be allowed to operate again but have to keep to the curfew still of 8pm which means that there is the possibility that the brewery will be open again on Sunday for our brunch session - fingers crossed.