Sunday, May 29th , still in Bobby's Marina, St Martin, but afloat again :-)

So far so good! We're having a good time and we get along very well. Arie and Frits did a very good job in getting the AIS running, but is was a challenging job. It took them hours, it was hot and there wasn't much room to work and they had to solder very tiny parts. Anyway they got it done and it works perfect.

In the mean time Eline and I went to the supermarket to do the shopping. However, the one we wanted to go to was closed Sunday's and the next one the taxi drove us to was extremely expensive.

So we decided to wait until Monday.

Andy and Rene did a good job in fixing a new hull through fitting but when they wanted to mount the sea cock, there wasn't enough room to make the turns. So they went back to Budget Marine to get a straight connector and fixed it.

In all it took way more time to get back in the water. Not that that is a problem, we all are fine with it, it's just what it is and we're not really in a hurry or something. We talked about the plan this morning and decided not to rush, we're not obliged to leave today and also we don't have to go to Antigua, which is 90 Nm straight upwind :-*

We still want to do a first short trip before the crossing so instead of Antigua we will go to St. Barth, that's upwind too but only 20 Nm :-)

The anchorage looks very promising and it would be nice to have a real tropical swim before we leave :-)

Marie, Andy's wife drove us to the supermarket this afternoon. They really are very friendly and helpful. But then again, Andy is a sailor too. He crossed the Atlantic about 60 times, 3 circumnavigations and a lot of racing.

Doing the shopping was fun. The four of us together with Marie went over to CostUless. Everybody was collecting stuff. Eline, who was in charge of the list, wasn't getting anywhere :-) So every 25 minutes or so we had to stop and give her a chance to check the list again. Anyway, we got everything quite easy and Marie was really a great help in driving us.

When we finally got back to the boat it was about happy hour and a great dinner at Curry in a Hurry's.

This morning we got all the stuff delivered and got all the remaining things done, filling up the water and fuel tanks, go over to immigration and lots more.

At 4:30 pm we'll finally be off then for our first leg to St Barths :-)