We have spent the last couple of days at Nanny Cay Marina, mostly to pick up our new dinghy.
We managed our first marina berthing with nearly expert skill. Our only issue was my failure to be able to throw the rope far enough, yup had a blonde moment. But other than that all good.
We ran around like headless chickens picking up all the equipment we needed from the chandlery and marine electronics store. We now have ourselves a brand new Raymarine E7. Before we left, my Dad took me aside and said “Don’t let Gary spend money on unnecessary toys. He does not need the E7”. Dad was concerned at the excited glimmer in Gary’s eyes when he talked about the E7 and it’s ability to link with the iPad and iPod. “It’s unnecessary” Dad told me, “Get the C90”. Dad, I promise I was not swayed by the iPad and iPod compatibility (although that is pretty super awesome), or that it has a touch screen, or that it can link up to your fish finder, radar and autopilot...I was swayed because it was cheaper! Can you believe it! It is almost half price here compared with NZ. I know it might sound geeky lame to most of you, but we are pretty excited about our new toy.
Violet our salesperson at our favourite Chandlery Budget Marine greeted us by name (perhaps we go there a bit much) and set us up a store account. We went crazy buying more toys like a WiFi booster aerial, and less expensive things like scrubbing brushes, light bulbs and such. Violet in her beautiful Caribbean accent told us they would blow up our dinghy for us and bring it around to our boat. Gary and I headed into Road Town to grab a few things. On our return, I noticed some paperwork had been left on our table. We both set eyes on it, and clicked at the same moment that the dinghy had arrived. We rushed on deck and found our fabulous new AB 9ft aluminium dinghy and Tohatsu 9.8 outboard tied up at the bow. Excellent!
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| Dinghy yet to be named. Suggestions welcome. |
After purchasing a few more extras and settling our account, we left Nanny Cay Marina and headed back out to the Islands. With 20-25knts we took it easy with a full main and reefed headsail. We made easy work of another 50ft cruising yacht as we breezed past at a steady 8.5knts. We hit a top speed today, without trying, of 9.6knts. 10knts is our goal speed to get to in the next few weeks. She doesn’t have the legs of Equilibrium (the super sleek race yacht Gary crews on) but she more than fits her design brief.
We are now moored at The Bight on Norman Island. Gary has spent the afternoon setting up our WiFi booster, and we now have pretty good skype reception (if you want the address, email me). I also winched him up the mast again to replace the anchor light, much to the excitement of neighbouring boats and passing dinghies who went on deck to watch and point. I guess our “number 8 wire”/do it yourself attitude is not so common here.
As an aside we found a couple of interesting boat names:
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a boat with an identity crisis |
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| This boat is awesome, it brings fresh produce and alcohol to the islands. Perhaps they had not watched the movie when they named the boat. |
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| A slice of home |
We are now off to sit up on deck and listen to the Caribbean steel drum music drifting from the bar onshore and look at the stars.
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