Fuel guys came round last night and gave us 340 liters of fuel. I think they may have overstated the amount but the price was pretty good. We went back to the place where we earlier had beers for dinner only to find it closed. We went elsewhere and enjoyed a few cocktails and a great fish dinner.<\/p>\n

Main event of today was shopping. At 9:30 we took the free bus from the marina to Sigo’s, a large supermarket out of town. We were able to buy using US$ cash and get Bolivars in return at a pretty good rate. We bought plenty more food and lots and lots of beer. Much of this purchase will still be aboard for Xmas for when the boys arrive in Panama.<\/p>\n

Also, today, I’ve installed the new VHF with helm remote. It was relatively straight forward until it came to running the cable from the helm to the nav table. In the past I have laid pieces of string so we can pull cables back and forth. The plug on the end of the remote cable was just a bit too big for something out of sight. It took a couple of hours of cursing and sweating to get the cable through. I am very pleased with this project as we now have a decent VHF at the helm using the antenna at the top of the mast. Previously we’ve used the handhelds at the helm and they didn’t have the range.<\/p>\n

Just now we shifted the boat a short way to the outside of the pack. We learned today it’s not a good idea to stop off at the west end of the island so we’re going straight to Tortuga. That’s 85nm so we’re doing another 3am start on this one. We’ve moved so we don’t have to negotiate our way through the fleet in the dark.<\/p>\n

Right now we have a very poor internet connection. I’m trying to upload photos but so far I’ve managed one additional cricket photo. If I get any further I’ll publish links to the albums in prior blogs even if the albums are incomplete. The last pic is always the collage so if you don’t see it, there are more to come.<\/p>\n