Boat stuff almost done….

We managed to get a hire car – only took a few hours of waiting around cos everyone is on Island Time…. and did all our provisioning (food and boat supplies) and managed to tick a few items of our boat stuff that we needed to buy or pick up as we’d already ordered it. So we’re now proud owners of a gas BBQ for the rail and loads of storage crates along with some linen / towels etc not to mention bits and pieces of tools. I’m constantly surprised by how expensive stuff is here….but it has to be imported I guess…and it is Christmas soon, so not really here at the best time for all this!

But some really important stuff has been delayed coming down from the US – like our liferaft, another anchor, some rode – and one of our new sails was made wrong. This was done by a Quantum loft in South Africa – so they are making a new one – and we are just hoping for an early delivery… But we have been really impressed by the quality of the work done on Morpheus by Chuck (Sailmark Designs) and Neal (Tropicom)… For those of you with any interest, I’ll post some pictures of these things at a later date.

So looks like we’ll be hanging around the BVIs and the USVIs until mid January at this rate – but hey ho, worse places to be! We were also planning to run down to the Spanish Virgins – but there are 35 knot winds and big seas forecast for the next few days so that doesn’t look like a goer at the minute.

Anyway, finally, we got off the dock today and ran down to Mahoe Bay, St John, in the US Virgin Islands. We’ve done our appeasement of Neptune as is customary when you rename a boat – although, technically, Morpheus remains Morpheus just had her hailing port added so becomes a very regal Morpheus of London. We poured some champagne into the sea for Neptune and asked him to take care of Morpheus and ourselves, then poured some over the bow of Morpheus for good luck and then we toasted every god we could think of just to make sure!