Christine had negotiated well with the local taxi driver, and got us about 1/2 price on our 3 trips required to complete our paperwork and final touches on the Shack as we leave the country.

Taxi showed up early this morning as we wanted to beat the heat to remove that mainsail. It came off with not issues, but now the boat that normally has a sail bag sporting the Sugar Shack name, its just a bare white boom. The 10 year old screws and pins came out without force, while Wayne undid the battens, I tamed the reefing lines and Christine removed the battens from the mast cars, and folded up the lazy bag and lazy bag cover. The down side is we learned that the top 2 battens of the 7 were shattered, luckily noone was injured with all those fiberglass shards everywhere. We’ll get them replaced when we go back up. All in all it only took us 1 hr, of course we told that taxi driver to pick us up 5+ hrs later, so we had lots of time to burn.

We walked the 15 minute walk from Catamaran Village to the Customs/Immigration office over new Crews Inn. Had a couple of beers to cool off while watching the bustling activity on a holiday weekend. Lots of locals heading out for day cruises or to secluded beaches by boat for a picnic. We cleared the country and paperwork required, you have to have extra forms ready for when you come back into the country with a one way ticket, and leave by boat. Paperwork the boat yard helps with, but you still have to do the clear off the boat roster and show your outbound airplane tickets.

We also learned that the boat yard closes for 3 weeks around Christmas, so we’ll have to be back here by Dec 18th, if we want to sail for the New Years/Christmas break. Sounds like thats going to mean more time off without pay – doh!

We are heading to an early dinner after a nice siesta in the air conditioning and some speed vision this afternoon, trying to get back in to the normal swing of things. With an early taxi ride, 5am to the airport, it should be an early evening. We get back to Texas somewhat early tomorrow and see what we missed while we were gone.

Back from a nice pleasant outdoor dinning experience, next to the hotel pool that we didn’t know existed.