So back on the boat we were presented with the dilemma of replacing our fuel tank. Fortunately Jim from Bees Knees was available to lend a hand. He dinghied over to us, took me to collect the parents and then we went to the nearby Budget Marine to collect a tank. The new tank is a bit smaller than my last and cheaper looking. Oh well. Fortunately, it didn’t cost as much as I feared.<\/p>\n

Yesterday we moved the boat back into the Lagoon through the 8:15 bridge opening. Helen and I then raced off to the Budget Marine in the south of the lagoon where we had to drop of our propane tank for the 9am refill deadline. We then went off to a few local stores to get stuff we needed. We took a lot longer than expected so understandable the parents were a little worried when we returned.<\/p>\n

We noticed that Dignity had slipped on her anchor somewhat while we were away. Thankfully not too far as my parents had no idea how to deal with a runaway boat. We decided to reset the anchor. In doing so we discovered what had stopped the slippage. We had become fouled in a thick chain serving some unknown purpose on the floor of the lagoon. I got the job of diving down and attaching a line to the anchor so we could pull it up backwards. This worked perfectly. Reseting the anchor didn’t the first time as it would not hold. On the next attempt we found a nice patch of sand into which the anchor stuck fast. We marked this area with a waypoint so we could find it again.<\/p>\n

Yesterday evening we moved the boat west so we could be near to the restaurant Turtle Bar where a cruiser get together was planned. We arrived in time for Happy Hour and met some old and new friends. It was nice to meet Mike the morning net controller who keeps us entertained. At the same bar we ate our final meal together which went down very well.<\/p>\n

The place we had moved the boat to was also close to the airport. At 3pm today I took my parents to the airport and we said our goodbyes. It’s been great having them with us for 3 weeks and to share a little of our new life with them.<\/p>\n

Getting back to the boat we shifted it back to our marked sandy patch so we could get connected again. We have paid for a service which only works around Marigot so we need to be up that end.<\/p>\n

So it’s back to Helen and I being alone on the boat. We have two weeks to get ready for the boys. We still need to install the radar. I need to sort out some on board interference from the SSB. We also need to bulk buy everything we can reasonably get on St Martin as many things are cheaper here than down islands. Mostly this means beer and wine. In about a week we’ll head off to Antigua. This will be an overnight sail. If we can leave earlier we will and perhaps squeeze in Statia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So back on the boat we were presented with the dilemma of replacing our fuel tank. Fortunately Jim from Bees Knees was available to lend a hand. He dinghied over to us, took me to collect the parents and then we went to the nearby Budget Marine to collect a tank. The new tank is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bees-knees","category-sxm","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}