Cane Garden Bay, Tortola, BVI

After the night before, today was dingy repair day. Kevin set about the outboard first and within 20 minutes that was running actually better than before because he fixed the slightly misaligned ratchet on the pull cord. Mike dashed out from their cockpit and gave the thumbs up when he heard it.

Next was the dingy was washed, stitched and inner and outer patches applied. The glue took quite a while to go off due to the ambient temperature and it is a bit complicated having to keep partial pressure in to keep the right shape to the curve of the tube whilst it is setting. However, Kevin who’d had dingies etc as a boy seemed to know what he was up to and by late afternoon it was all sorted and just allowing the glue to set properly overnight.

Mike and Jean headed off in the afternoon to Road Town where Mike’s parents were arriving the next day by cruise ship for the day. They popped by to check whether we needed a lift anywhere as we were stranded aboard for the day, but as we were ok they headed off.

Meanwhile, I was following Mike’s advice the night before that I could obtain the PIN we needed to book our US visa appointment by phone, not only at local vendors as it says on the website. So, I called up using Skype Out, also discovering the unexpected bonus that US freephone numbers are free on Skype. After listening to lots of announcements, you finally get the option to pay your $14.95 over the phone, so I go through that finding out that this entitles me to 8 minutes of conversation with the operator. I am automatically connected and we start the long winded process of giving the details, the broken Skype connection is not helping and everything has to be repeated twice and spelt out. The person we are speaking to sounds so much like an android that we really can’t tell whether they are human or a machine. The eight minutes expire and the Skype connection is getting worse until finally it breaks off and we don’t have a confirmation of the appointment. I then have to call again, paying another $14.95, this time from our UK mobile as we can’t risk another cut off and have no dingy to go ashore for a payphone. This time we get a human and an appointment in mid June though we have to start again from the beginning and even proceeding at a rate of knots the 8 minutes expire and she starts talking so quickly that I can hardly understand a word. Anyway, we get our confirmation and now don’t have to rush to Turks & Caicos just to buy the PIN to call and the appointment isn’t three months away as we were originally told it would be.