Has anyone seen our life raft ??

There is never a dull moment when sailing !! The past several days we have been “stuck” in Mahon, Menorca due to crappy weather & also waiting for boat parts. There are 3 kinds of wind — too light… too strong… in the wrong direction. Ordered a new wind vane for the top of our mast… hopefully that will solve our instrumentation issues. Our instruments (and boat) are 17 years old… that is young still for the boat.. but gadgets are like computers and cellphones, almost out-dated the year after you buy them. But for now we will hope the new wind vane solves the problem and we can look at replacing all instrumentation at a later date. We lucked out finding a really good boat shop here that has almost everything we need and can order in specialty parts quickly… and because the “sailing season” is pretty much done here by the end of October, they’ve been giving us a pretty good discount. I must say, the people of Menorca have been phenomenal to deal with and super friendly !! Very welcoming and helpful..

So when I say there is never a dull moment… this morning as we were heading to the boat shop to pick up more boat stuff, Scott noticed that we lost something in our rough passage from Corsica… “Maggie, do you notice something missing from the back of the boat ?? “ The lift raft is gone !!! We lost the damn life raft during our passage – holey shit !!! Well, add that to our list of things for the boat shop to order.. luckily it did need to be replaced in the next 1-2 years and was actually less $$ than what we expected… but about a 4-5 day arrival… so… we’ll be here for a few more days! But, it is a beautiful island with wonderful people… will rent a car for a day & sight see inland!

Other than that.. just busy doing boat projects, grocery shopping, walking back & forth to the boat store. I’ve learned how to cook risoto. We’re docked near a massive 61’ catamaran that is breaking the wind for us… but tomorrow we will move to another marina that is about 1/2 price of what we are paying here (and closer to the boat store). We are pretty much stuck staying in a marina as there are no anchorages (free) nearby & with the rough weather it would be a nasty dingy ride about 5k to the boat store.. where we seem to be alot lately!!

Finally was able to get a sim card, so we’ve been working on our business websites & keeping on top of things while we have wifi. Can’t believe we will have been on the boat for 6 weeks on Thursday!! Time is flying by !! Days are definitely getting cooler.. haven’t been able to go for a swim in over 2 weeks !! Need to head south !! Due to crap weather and boat maintenance, we are about 10 days behind our “schedule”. We will now be picking up our crew member somewhere in Spain instead of Gibralter. Since we are behind schedule we will not be able to spend any time in Mallorca or Spain, other than sailing by.. 🙁 But that will get us closer on schedule as we need to be in the Canary Islands by about Dec 10^th…

Anyway, just a quick update as to what we are doing & where we are..