St Lucia Day 5

Today is the day that we have our safety check booked.  After the amount of money we have spent on safety equipment, we had better be able to “pass”.

Chris arrives to complete the check.  It would appear that there are just a couple of things to get; drogues for the life rings and white hand-held flares.  The latter are impossible to get here so we will just have to wait until we get to Panama for those.

Around lunchtime, a guy turns up to give us our free rigging check courtesy of our marine insurance company.  He starts going over the boat and finds that one of the 19 strands on one of the port stays has sheared and needs to be replaced so the whole thing comes down and is taken away.  Thankfully he finds nothing else wrong.

We expect Jim to arrive in the early evening but get an e-mail from Lynda saying that he has arrived in Barbados minus his luggage (his BA flight from Manchester was late arriving in London not giving enough time for the luggage to transfer) but didn’t have our telephone number.  Mike immediately rings Jim and arranges for him to call us when he arrives in St Lucia.

I finish up the champagne.  It is now flat but mixed with orange juice, it’s OK.  After two glasses, cutting my hair seems like a good idea.  Peering into the mirror afterwards, it appears to be alright.

Jim duly arrives.  Luckily, he has learned over the years, to pack a little of everything in his hand luggage – a very sensible precaution.  We go out for a drink and a bite to eat at H2O, which has been done up since I was last here and looks good now.  The food is much improved too.

Photo:  Jim and I

Photo:  The crew – Jim, myself and Mike