106: SAILING LESSONS CON'T|Day 6-7 and PROVISIONING DAY as we prepare to leave St. Lucia

It's the end of day six. Today was really exciting for a number of reasons. We talked about provisioning. Getting the boat ready. Being a charter boat, this has very little equipment on board for blue water crossings because you have to really be ready for anything, especially this time of year when we have squalls coming over all the time. We're going to be going on some overnights. We have to have spare parts for everything. Tools. All of our tools are in St. Martin, so we had to pick up extra tools there. Even then, for our captain, it's no excuse. We've got to have, you know, pretty much the bare minimum. It turned out that someone had a screw loose. So we needed a lot of screwdrivers. I wonder who that is? H1N1? So we had to fix the problem big time. Thank you, Captain Ben. Ben went through all the procedures to preparing the boat and getting ready to go on the water, which was great. And then we actually went to the hardware store and to the marine store and picked up extra fenders. We picked up extra line. We picked up just a lot of things that we needed just to make the boat ready. So when you're throwing it, I'm going to lead you this hand and then let this one on Kyle and then you might detect us. Whoa, it's good. All right, honey. Then after we did that, it was the afternoon and we took the boat out and we did man overboard drills. Yeah, let's go check out Bob. He's the unfortunate person who's taking it in the shorts here. Oh, there's Bob. Well done, sir. Do you sell these on Amazon or is this a do-it-yourself thing? This is a very refined product, Mr. Bob. Wow, we're really impressed. Man overboard. Hang in there, Bob. We love you, Bob. She's going around when we're doing an oval. I like a racetrack. Nice car. Nasty car. Welcome to the back of the boat. Oh, Bob, you've been bad. I was really naughty because Bob kept jumping overboard and expected to be rescued. But then later on, Bob kept jumping over and I pulled out the fish cap and, you know, I'm like, Bob, you've done this enough. I have had it with you. So we're down, we're down a life preserver. We did ovals when we're all under engine. It was crazy. And you had to not run over Bob and you had to pick him up. Toward the end, I did want to run him over and that's when I broke out the fish cap. But we just realized when with man overboard, boy, it's a lot of work to get that back. No fenders and no life preservers were harmed in this activity. We definitely feel more confident today. And then on Tuesday, we're going to actually take off for Martinique. So very exciting stuff. What's going on today? Good morning. Day seven of the never ending adventure. Got some laundry done this morning in preparation for our departure. We are now off to get our COVID tests because we need them to be able to get into Antigua in five days. Then we are provisioning the boat. It's not a big oversea adventure. On our way to St. Martin. Exactly. So we are off and running. Here's the clinic. I'm gonna make you a stop. Oh yeah. Captain Ben's good on a boat, but not so much in a car. It's my first time. Oh man, you're doing great for your first time. Oh yeah. What's with all the bags? Where'd those come from? We just all sprouted back. We are provisioning. This is only for seven days and we have so much stuff. Just quickly go to places we can get weather from. Another subject that is just way over our heads. It's a bottomless pit and really it's probably if you're going offshore or crossing channels, it's the most important subject. We also worked on how to drop an anchor. We are headed out into a bay around this piece of land here and the goal today is to work on anchoring. I'm not sure I will sleep the first few times we drop anchor without him on board because I'll be so nervous that it's going to move. And then we worked on reefing the sails and I can understand why people don't reef. Reefing is just reducing the size of the sail. So you let them down. The first reef is the sail is bigger. Second reef, the sail is even smaller. So in a bad storm, you're not going to catch as much wind. We kind of have now an understanding of why people may not want to reef or delay reefing until it's a little bit too late and becomes dangerous. So we practice that. And then of course, Captain Brown came in and beautifully parked us in the slip. We want to get really good at doing the most difficult maneuvering coming into a marina because if we've got that down, we're prepared. So that was great and a great ending to our day of lessons. Good morning. It is our day off. Well, not exactly our day off. Day off? What are you talking about? Mayday scrubbing It is our day before we leave. This morning, I used this great new cleaner we have called Q7. It's a degreaser kind of soapy solution. Worked great. For the first time, scrubbed the entire deck of the boat. Took about an hour and I loved it. And then I did laundry out of a very small bucket. Yeah baby. Oh, I'm a washing machine too. I'm a diesel mechanic. I'm a super loving hubby. I'm a sailor boy. I'm a navigation station. It's kind of frustrating, but hopefully it's the last time before we get the washing machine. I think Eileen wanted me to do it just so I wouldn't back out on the washing machine. Convincing. And I'm definitely not backing out. We're doing an upgrade on the washing machine because I never want to clean it out of that bucket again. While he was doing so many domestic chores, I on the other hand went off and tried to buy some hardware and then walked to the store to provision with some things that we needed that we didn't pick up yesterday and then stopped by to see a friend who's in town and coming on the boat with us tomorrow. Got to see her and grabbed her passport and then came back and I completed all the customs and immigration forms and then went to the customs and immigration office while someone else was taking a nap. I am headed to customs and immigration to check us out of the country. We're headed out tomorrow. So, first time ever doing this. It'll be a great experience. Hey, five minutes. Five minutes. That's all it took. That's amazing. Customs and immigration. Well, I don't know if every marina or every check-in is going to be like this. Probably not, but I went into the immigration office. He took my form. They stamped me out and literally five minutes later, I'm walking out the door. No one in line. It felt very similar to when we flew to the Bahamas and we had our experience of coming out of a private plane and going through customs and immigration where there's terminal just for privates. So, this felt very similar. I'm glad it's over, but that means in 24 hours, we have to be out of St. Lucia. So, that kind of got us to where we are now, which is just to take a break and after this little break, we're going to have to map out our route, figure out our degrees and our nautical miles so that we're prepared tomorrow in the event that GPS comes out. The other thing we did was we prepared our ditch bag. God, we did a lot today. We did a lot today. Yeah. What's a ditch bag? Yeah, our ditch bag is kind of our emergency bag. If something happens on the boat and we have to abandon it, which basically they say never abandon a boat if you jump down. You should always be jumping up to your life raft. So, that means never pull your life raft out if your boat is floating and they even said if it's upside down, stay on the boat. They do not recommend getting on your life raft, which is really interesting. Well, ditch bag is the bag that is fully equipped for your survival in that life raft. There are things already on the life raft like water and some provisions, but certainly not enough to last for a long time, but we also need our documents. We need some other things that have to go into that bag. It's our final night, our final sunset in St. Lucia. We've been living here over a month now, a month and two days. We're leaving in the perfect time, but we are very sad. The country is just amazing, isn't it? Yeah, it really is, but we have so many other places to go and the seas. Yeah. So, we're not totally sad, but yeah, it's going to be a long time before we get back here. It's been a great day, a great last day here. We're hoping that the crossing tomorrow is uneventful. It should be about four, four and a half hours to St. Anne's in Martinique. As always, we appreciate you watching. Please subscribe. Please share our videos. Please hit the like button and we'd love to hear from you. Please comment and we love you guys and that's all for now. All right, enjoy the sunset. Look at that beautiful sunset. Last one here.