Sunday, March 18, 2007

Antigua - Week 5

Well, our anchor chain has more hair on it than a Husky in the dead of winter. I hate to think what our prop looks like.. It will definitely need a dive and clean before we move - if I can find it. But, the good news is - the quoting/repair process is rocketing forward at glacial speeds. Vagus has been prodded, poked, hammered and inspected, and we got our first quote. Hopefully the other quote will come this week and we can start making plans. We have also found out that we can't get our boat hauled too soon as there is not a room, there is not even a cupboard, available in Antigua from March 24 to April 8 as several games of the World Cricket Cup are being played here. People are even chartering yachts to use them as floating hotel rooms for this period. Never could get the hang of cricket. Someone said that it was the Brits attempt at defining eternity. It sure is popular though. Even Canada has a team playing in the cup.

We finally got a local SIM card and local phone number for our cell phone. This has greatly simplified communication with the various companies. Before this we had to hang out on the boat, listening to the VHF radio for people to call. Now we can leave the boat, walk about with the cell phone in my pocket and, like everyone else, wait for a merry little jingle to page me. It still amazes me that cell phones are so inexpensive here and so expensive in Canada. The process took all of 10 minutes and about $16CAN and we have a local number. We had to take two local buses through the countryside to reach the cell phone office. One bus took us into the main terminal in St. John's - near where all the cruise ships dock. And the other took us out to a mall containing the Digicel phone office. Our total bus fare just about equaled the cost of the SIM card.

One nice thing is that we are in a cross roads for cruisers coming North and going South. Paramour III has been here all week - we had planned to sail to the US with Paramour - and on Friday, Ariel came in. (We celebrated New Year's on Ariel.) Chinook Arch is here getting a new mainsail. We are really lucky and thankful to have friends about to get us away from the boat repair blues.

So stay tuned - will we or won't we get a second quote? Will we like the quotes? Will the insurance company like the quotes? Will I suddenly discover cricket? Who will show up at the anchorage? And, most importantly, who will win at dominoes this afternoon? What a cliffhanger to end this on! More next week.

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