We got up early to hit the fuel dock only to realize there were two 100+ monohauls tied up and making no signs of moving any time soon.  The fuel dock people motioned us to raft up next to the pretty blue one.  It was weird dragging the giant fuel line across their boat and a bit awkward walking across their boat to get to the fuel dock, but you do what you got to do.

I had to clear Matt and I from the island (we got our passports stamped when we flew into Gran Canarias, where Marvin and Ron did not get their passports stamped when they arrived via the boat).  Evidently, the marina boat clearance office only clears the boat in and out of the country.  They do not clear the people or stamp your passports. If you need to clear immigration (get your passport stamped), you must go to the police station which is 6 1/2 miles away.  In addition, when the Sugar Shack cleared into Gran Canarias, Marvin did not receive much paper work we are hoping clearing out and clearing into St Lucia won’t be a problem.  Of course I did not know that the marina boat clearance office was not immigration as I waited over an hour to see someone. Once I got inside the nice lady informed me that I had to take our passports to the immigration office located at the police station, she handed me a map and said it was too far to walk.  I headed back to the fuel dock and noticed our sweet boat was no longer rafted up to the big beautiful blue boat and went back to the docks by the clearance office – I started hailing the coast guard when I noticed Ron in our dingy at the dock. I told Matt what had to be done and off I went to find a cab. I decided to start walking in the general direction and no cab could be found.  About 4 ½ miles into my walk I hailed a cop car and tried to explain my dilemma.  The nice officer loaded me up into the back seat of their car and the driver made some comment about being a “taxi driver” (even with the language barrier, I understood that much).  Luckily there was someone else there who could translate for me as they did not want to stamp our passports – after 20 minutes of back and forth, our passports were stamped and I was headed back to the boat – another 6 ½ miles back.  Unfortunately I could not find a cab or a police car that would help me, but I made it back a little over 3 hours later and off we go to cross the Atlantic at 11:46am (zulu).

We decided to head South with the wind on our nose to avoid some storms, this would allow Matt and I a chance to get our sea legs and get used to 24/7 sailing.  We had little to no wind – where were the trade winds everyone told us about (trade wind come from the stern and push you forward)?

Ron and I decided to be the designated island explorers – the destination – fresh food market.  To be honest, it was not much of an exploration as Ron had already scoped it all out.  Ron outfitted himself with a giant backpack (think it might have been for fishing or something) and I grabbed my Trader Joe’s sailing bags (thank you Kimberly for the great find).  Ron is a big, strapping guy and said the walk wasn’t far so we headed off.  The walk to the free food market was about ½ – ¾ of a mile, not too far when you are empty handed.  It was an enormous fresh food market, 2 stories and several blocks long and wide.  Inside they have tons of individual vendors with all sorts of foods, veggies, and fruits.  We decided to look around first, get pricing ideas and then load up on the heavy items first. One entire section of the fresh food market was for fish and they were showing a group of children a 6’ eel – not kidding, it was huge.  The fish handler was playing with the kids and opening the eel’s mouth and scaring them – it was funny, but gross all at the same time J How can this be sanitary? We managed to find all the veggies and fruit we needed including 6 flats of eggs (that is over 200 eggs my friend).  Matt and Ron were convinced we could go through all of these eggs, my cholesterol is escalating just carrying these flats and I am sure my heart will stop before we get ½ way across the Atlantic.  We also decided we needed to find a utility store for spare items and came across a five and dime of sorts.  We found hangers (needed heavy duty ones for the foul weather gear), a rubber mitten (for the hot yummy items coming out of the oven, some batteries and more – nice little store, run by Chinese women who spoke Spanish, which kept throwing me off J Heading back, Ron carried the large back pack bag (because I could not even lift it) and 2 bags and I had  a couple of bags and a flat of oranges – did I say it was only ½ – ¾ miles back to the boat?  Oh my goodness, we had stop several times, but we managed to hump it all back to the boat.  At least during our time together I got to know Ron a little better and he had a few funny stories from the first part of the crossing.

We saw a lot of young people from all over the world wanting to get on boats as crew.  We were asked several times a day by different groups of young people to crew our boat – they sail for free, eat for free, get a free ride to S. America and all we get is crew that may or may not know how to sail – we decided we were fine with our 4 man group.  I wonder if I would have been that brave to get on a random boat with people I did not know to cross the Atlantic (trapped for weeks)? Several were women, and cute ones at that – brave hippies or careless?

Matt and I decided to go to a new Carefore to spend our 40€ in credit and pick up a few forgotten items.  We hopped in our little car and zoomed away to what we thought was the grocery store, but in reality it is a grocery store inside a shopping mall (think Barton Creek Mall or the Glendale Galleria – that nice)!  We entered the mall from the garage, up the escalator, and past clothing and jewelry stores to the entrance of the grocery store.  We did pass the “Banana Store” that sold Apple Computers – that was cute. This Carefore was a little smaller, but still had all the same goodies.  We decided to surprise the guys with the stupid pig leg that they had gone on and on about (and frankly we had seen on a few boats too – they are hung from the cock pit and you just peel off a piece of ham at any time – works well for the night shifts).  We picked up another round of stuff and at check out tried to use our credit only to learn that it was not valid until January – so I handed it to the lady behind me and she smiled.  Then we got another 40€ credit for the current purchase which I handed to the lady behind the other one (share the wealth).  So, that is about $140 smacks that we just gave away.

Have to admit that I had not heard much about the life long foods (milk, juice, breads, etc…), but they are a crew’s best friend on long voyages.  You can vacuum seal the bread or buy them pre-packaged and all the beverages are fine outside the fridge until you are ready to consume them.

Marvin managed to fix the Vacuflush toilet (we hope) and we should be ready to go tomorrow after we get some fuel and check out of immigration.  Got a bit of pig juice on my pants and they stained, totally gross.  But I did decide to paint the pig leg nails a bright pink – wanted to see how long it took the boys to notice J

The boys mentioned that TMS (the company that did a lot of work for us in Marmaris) left the boat a HUGE mess with tools, trash, and tons of cushions everywhere.  We shocked to learn this as they were wonderful to work for and did really good work (or at least we thought they did).  We had asked TMS to toss the old, green cushions (and we told the boys that they could discard them), but yet they were still on the boat when we arrived in Gran Canarias.  So, we spent today, tossing the green cushions, the excess luggage that we didn’t want anymore and a few other useless items.  Of course, we left them on the curb and they were confiscated by someone else who put them to better use.  The other thing we discovered was that TMS did not do our interior cushions properly.  The main problem is that they didn’t put the wood insert into the bottom of each cushion (you see the cushions lay over storage areas and without the wood insert your tookish sinks in the center of the cushion when you sit down).  The other problem is that TMS did not create the lip around the edge of the cushions to prevent them from sliding around.  It is really only a big deal on one cushion, but irritating that it was not done on any of them.  Always helps to be present when the work is complete – photos do not do the work justice.  The good news is that the cushions look a million times better than the old ones and are very comfy!  We had them made out of Al Contera and they are soft and water resistant (not repellant, but close enough) and they are a beautiful tan color.

Even though the ARC boats left yesterday, the marina is packed with all types of boats.  ARC had 250 participating boats and another 250 boats that followed them.  But there are at least another 250 boats preparing to leave like us in a few days.

During the on board food inventory process we found lots of items that were in foreign languages which made it challenging to figure out the expiration – so when in doubt, throw it away.  Some things we just tossed for fear of having them end up in one of our meals, some products looked too interesting not to try and some packages were deemed just pure “mystery items”.  It appears that Marvin maintains his slim figure by eating cup of soups and lots of coffee – how has he lived to be 72?

Matt, Ron, and I loaded into the small car and heading to Carefore, the grocery store.  We only passed it once, hit a dead end street at the local dump and tried to find an access road back to the highway (they don’t have access roads on the island, it was a dirt road and a dead end).  Carefore is an enormous market and offers food, household items, automotive, sports, and outdoor.  Kind of like a giant Walmart or Super Target.  It is overwhelming.  We decided to start at one end and work our way through but before we got started, Ron was ogling a large pig leg.  I thought, he can’t be serious so I kept walking.  We found almost all of the dry products we needed, including long life milk (regular and low fat), cream, and juice. I love it.  It comes in little boxes that don’t have to be refrigerated – not sure how it tastes, but Ron said it was good, really?  As we loaded up on lunch meats, bacon, chicken, pasta, water, soda and other must have’s I wondered into the snack isle.  I thought I bought too many snacks (chips, cookies, nuts, etc….) and put a few things back.  It was interesting trying to find food items that would last over 25 days for 4 people.  Didn’t want things to get moist in the cabinets and we don’t have much room in the boat size fridge and freezer – it is all trial and error.  We made it out feeling confident that we got what we needed and headed to the check out.  We were very surprised to discover we had only spent a little over 400 € and even more surprised to find out that we got 10% back to spend at another shopping date (that was a 40€ or $68 credit).  Of course, the first thing Ron said was that we should go back and get that pig leg (what, really?)  We left Marvin behind to try to fix the master head (the vacuflush component was flooded when the escape hatch opened during a storm on the first part of the crossing).  Marvin was trying to fix it as there was NO way I was going to share a head with 3 men on the opposite of the boat!  He was not able to fix the head while we were gone, but he did change the oil – that was nice.