5 October Day 4 Arrivals

As promised by D&D Marine our Jotunmastic was delivered to Spice Island by taxi at 9am this morning.

Shortly after I was in the car with the required paperwork to clear our Mastervolt CombiMaster through Customs. To save the import duty we are allowed to claim Yacht in Transit status from Customs based at Port Louis Marina. I give the officer our up to date cruising permit and two copies of the invoice. He gives me two forms to complete, applies the mandatory official stamp and I can proceed to Fedex. They take the paperwork from Customs and adds four pages of documentation and an invoice for 2.5% of the value plus shipping costs. I then have to go to the Post Office to pay the money due to the tax man, collect my receipt to add to the sheaf of papers and return to Fedex. I pay them a small fee for the clearance and they give me our parcel.

I'm amazed that it has only taken 72 hours from order to collection! Usually it takes much, much longer and I would have to do more chasing to find our package. Having the car to bob between the offices has been so much easier than taking the bus and walking. Driving back I'm thinking how happy David is going to be with his Christmas present.

While I've been out on a jaunt around town David's been cleaning and servicing the propeller. He's drained and replaced the oil in the sail drive, replaced three seals on the propeller shaft with new ones that I brought back from the UK. He's also fitted new seals and oil in the bow thruster. With my jobs done I can now help.

prop removed, keel bolt reset

Outside the polishing of the topsides is going, not going as well as we would have wished and slower than estimated, but if you start after 9am, finish at 4pm and take lunch and smokko breaks it will take longer.

We are feeling disappointed. When you invest in extra help to make life easier and the end job falls short of expectations it's disappointing. We're hoping he'll redeem himself with sanding the hull.

We fancy a pukka slap up steak and wine, and while we still have the car, buzz off to our favourite restaurant, Aquarium. We're very full, but not disappointed.