17th February

12 03.520 N
68 51.216 W

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

ASH WEDNESDAY, LENT BEGINS!

Today is going to be the shortest post yet as we did nothing whatsoever today. We had no transport and no great need to go ashore and the boat jobs are at a standstill for the time being as there is nothing urgent that needs doing. This was truly a day of R and R, we read books, played computer games, watched videos and sat in the cockpit until it got too uncomfortable to stay outside. Gerry spent some time looking at the weather for the next few days with a view to leaving here and heading off to Colombia, its looking like our best day to leave will be this Sunday which means that we will have to do the checking out stuff on Saturday. With this plan set in jelly we then inquired about hiring a car for just one day - the Saturday, so that we could get the checking out done, a last load of laundry and of course a bit of a shopping trip for provisions that we will need for a 4 day or so transit. At this point we hit a road block, the car hire places only do a minimum of 3 day hire. Gerry bit the bullet and put in an order for a car starting tomorrow, it will give us a bit of extra time to check out anything we think we've missed out on and to do the shopping and laundry at leisure rather than a last minute dash around. The checking out still has to be done within 24hours of us leaving so that remains a Saturday job. Our only trip ashore today came in the evening when we went into The Pier restaurant for a fairly early dinner, if you ever get the chance their carpaccio starter is worth going there for! Tomorrow should be a bit more interesting as we will once again have a car at our disposal.
i have used the panoramic view of Fort Amsterdam that we took on Sunday for today's photo to give you an idea what it looks like as used today for the seat of government.