Catching Up ...

Monday
The jetlag got me at about 0400 local time by waking me up. As that is 0800 BST that was a lie in for a Monday! But wakiness was short lived and I finally got dragged from my pit at 0820 by the Owner. So much to do. We needed to get to Hamilton to do a bit of boaty shopping at one of the many chandleries there. And it is SO expensive to buy stuff here. There's a 35% import tax on the stuff we needed. Just like the 22 dollars I had to pay on entry just because I didn't have a return ticket! (The duty would have been included if I was travelling on).

So we went by bus. What an interesting ride. You'll remember that I was plied with rum the previous night. What with the ups and downs and the sharp curves, I wasn't on top form. But the island is beautiful.

We went to the first chandlery and were part way through buying own stuff, when Mike and Rick turned up with their wives. We decided that Greg would continue buying stuff for the boat, and that I would tag along with them. Greg did another four hours shopping whilst we explored the island!

We took the FastCat ferry from Hamilton (in the centre of Bermuda) to the Royal Dockyard at the westmost point. This seems to be the equivalent of the Long Island ferry - and 20 minutes rather than a one hour bus ride. Unfortunately as we came off the ferry a young girl collapsed in front of us and we had to administer First Aid until the ambulance arrived. That was a long 3 minutes!! Good job we'd done the course.

So we wended our way back to Hamilton via the Museum and a Lighthouse - There is so much history here. Mostly slaves and convicts. And yacht racing. Imagine trying to navigate to an island 22 miles long and two miles wide about 600 miles off the American coast. In the 1800s! Before GPS.

Dean and Lucy arrived at Eclipse while I was still out on the town.
So we just had to catch up in the bar. !

Tuesday.
Fixing the boat. There was so much to do. It's mostly fixed now. Except for the autopilot which requires outside experts who are coming by 0900 Bermudan (or whenever - they are rather relaxed about deadlines), on the day we leave to cross the Atlantic. Cutting it fine, but if it fails again, we'll steer by hand.

The next post may well be from the boat.

Thanks to Robert for pointing his readers my way. I'll try to do as well as he did.

Thanks to you all for your supportive texts.

Azores here we come.
DBM