I'm going to rewind a little to when I arrived in Virgin Gorda to pick up the Catamaran as Ive finally downloaded the photos. Its a little 'Back to the Future' but I thought that its better to have the process in there or at least the highlights.

I arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico early morning in the rain. The land was a deep green from the air with muddy waterways snaking their way to the coast. The outskirts were prettily spaced villages with fields and rain forest in between. Mangroves lined the creeks. As we edged closer the villages became towns and the towns became cities. San Juan itself was a sprawling city.

The Seaborne airways people freaked out when they saw my surfboard, one of the girls demanded I stand it up which I did. After much talking in Spanish between them, they decided they would try to fit it in the plane to Virgin Gorda. At the eleventh hour, I was called to the desk and told that they couldn’t fit the board in and that they would put me on the plane to Tortola and then a ferry to Virgin Gorda. I got on the larger plane and by larger I mean a 10 seater and of we went. 

The islands looked beautiful from the air. The flight was only about 30 minutes and when I arrived the guy rushed me through customs so that I wouldn’t miss the ferry to Virgin Gorda. Only 1 small problem, my other bag hadn’t arrived. The board was there which was great but my other bag with all the boat tools, epirb and everything else was MIA. The only solution was that the bag went to VG.

I caught the ferry with Captain Crispin, An old Jamaican with a huge gut and a pearly grin. We took the short ferry ride and arrived in VG. After a long wait at the VG airport, I was finally re-united with my bag and just on sunset went searching for the boat!

I found her on the up on the grass surrounded by Palm tree next to the ferries. The door was pad-locked so I shimmied through a forward hatch and had a good look around, lucky im skinny... The boat felt great and was in good nick. There were the usual bumps and scratches but overall awesome!

I found some 'Pots of Gold' well as: She had the optional extra water tank therefore an extra 300Litres.

The plotter was an awesome Raymarine multi function controller not the old Garmin they thought she had when I bought it. 

So too work!!!

The first big job was scraping back the entire hull. There was a solid amount of barnicles encrusted over the hull...Hot and tiring work, made a little easier by the reggae drifting across the docks...