Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

The big confession is that what’s really pinned us to St Martin for the last two weeks has been issues with our battery chargers. Initial response from Lagoon was pretty good. From the encouragement of our vendor, CatCo, they sent two new chargers (port and starboard) to St Martin. Not so good, the method of sending resulted in a lengthy delivery and the method of packaging resulted in the units arriving damaged. Eddie was hired by the local rep to install them. He was able to fix one but the second failed to work properly.

CatCo at this point came to the rescue in a very big way. Their top engineer, Scott, flew out of Florida with a third replacement without even going home after flying in from family in Chicago. He’s been on the boat for two nights and a day. He’s sorted out the final charger and tidied up a lot of minor issues. (He’s also been the soul of the party). The boat is now working perfectly to quote Scott. Can’t say enough to express our appreciation and gratitude for what CatCo have done for us. They even covered the bill to fly the family from Antigua where we would have met up if we had not had these issues.

All aboard send our heartfelt thanks to Scott and Hugh for what they have done.

So with this adventure passing behind us, the next one beckons. Tomorrow is looking more and more to be the day to set sail for Antigua. We move the boat today and are now all fueled up. After dropping off Scott at the airport, we’ll be moving out of the Lagoon in the morning through the 8:15 bridge opening. The rest of the morning will be our final provisioning and checking out of the island. Then in the evening we’ll be off to Antigua – an overnight sail. Trip time is uncertain as winds are quite variable due to some activity north of us. If we get our act together we may just be able to stop off at Tintemarre on the way.

Spirits of all aboard are lifting quite high. Everyone is excited about the trip and the atmosphere aboard is quite bouyant. At lot of work is still ahead of us preparing for the trip. A lot of stuff around the boat needs to be stowed so we’ll be quite busy before we leave. All the same, we’re close to being ready. It’ll be fun.

Boxing Day (ie the day after Xmas) involved a trip into Marigot for the kids. They all walked from the road near where we are anchored. They wandered around the town and climbed up to the fort and saw the view. On the way back John didn’t feel too well so they requested a pick up in the dinghy. This was our first attempt with six in the dinghy and it was a bit slow.

Boxing Day dinner was curried turkey. Very well done and big thanks to the chef Helen.

The work installing the radar was also largely completed so now all our navigation aids are ready and rolling.

Today the family went to Philipsburg to have a look around. The trip was quite short. John stayed back with me as he still wasn’t well but certainly improving.

The weather remains windy keeping us here in St Martin. A number of boats have had issues out in the channel so we’re glad we’re inside in the lagoon. Progress has been made on the parts from the manufacturer but we’re not quite complete yet. We’re almost ready to go so eyes remain glued to the forecasts.

While we’re excited about the prospect of leaving the old problem of leaving good friends will again present itself. It is part of the life and it’s never really goodbye – just au revoir – till we meet again.

It’s nice now that I have email working so well over SSB. Contact should remain simple.

Wake up was later than normal due to the lateness of our prior nights bed time as well as all the traveling on the previous day.  Morning started of lazy.  Later in the morning, Jess, Ben and Sam were dropped off on the beach where they explored and played volleyball with local guests.

At lunch, boy did we eat.  As per Thanksgiving, Turkey was cooked on the grill.  We were very full afterwards so the afternoon was a sleepy one.  Evening was dominoes with Jim and Anne to accompany us.  Helen kept us fed throughout the evening so today we’ll need to exercise to start the process of working all the excess off.

Here are a few festive pics for your perusal.

Everyone was picked up ok and we celebrated Xmas by being awake at midnight. A feat for all of us in our various ways.

This morning, I couldn’t resist it. While waiting for the younger ones to wake up I finished the wiring for the SSB power. This is my first transmission with the setup in full working order.

Merry Xmas one and all.