The past few days have primarily been spent getting ready for our departure from Djibouti.
On Wednesday morning, ourselves and Golden Spirit (Caroline and Michael) dinghied over to Talulah Ruby III for morning coffee and to discuss route options and strategies for the next leg of our passage to Port Suez. With a number of questions outstanding regarding official procedures for the various countries, associated costs and the possibility of purchasing diesel en route, it was agreed that Elaine would make contact with the respective agents and report back to the group. Having received the feedback needed, after a lot of “pulling teeth” to get accurate costs and the information we needed, she decided the easiest way to convey the information was to collate a Summary Sheet of all the pertinent details, including weather and provisioning requirements, which was subsequently distributed to Talulah Ruby III and Golden Spirit during sundowners that evening on Golden Spirit. Of course, with our newfound knowledge, our strategy changed significantly, resulting in Roy and Elaine sitting up to the wee small hours to create suitable options, which changed again following the perusal of the latest weather forecasts. Regardless, the decisions had been made on our departure date and the agent was notified accordingly.
Top-up provisioning began in earnest with Roy making two trips to the supermarket, while Elaine remained onboard to collate our departure To Dos List, get all the paperwork in order for each of the agents along the route and sanitise everything returning from the shops.
Working through the To Dos yesterday, Elaine spent the morning stowing our latest purchases and submitted all the clearance documentation to the various agents, while Roy cooked the passage meals, fixed the water leak in the starboard hot water heater and checked the steering chain, using Elaine’s help as needed. By the afternoon we both needed a wee nap.
Today we divided to conquer again. While Roy collected Caroline so they could make one last trip to the grocery store together, allowing Michael to finish some maintenance tasks on Golden Spirit, Elaine completed our Floatplan, following separate conversations with Keenan and Justine and informed the family of our intended departure, before Paul, off Talulah Ruby III, arrived to collect our passports and our outstanding payment due to the agent for his fees, the PCR tests, the visas and the port dues, in order to process our clearance documentation for our departure, following which she backed up all our photographs to be catalogued at a later date.
Roy returned at lunchtime bearing gifts again, a freshly baked baguette, which we enjoyed with cheese and paté, as well as more fresh fruit and vegetables and, of course, the all important French pastries, including “chasson pomme”, Elaine’s favourite.
By then we both needed another afternoon nap, before Roy collect one of the crew members off Talulah Ruby III and headed to the mall to get the last of the USD we needed.
In between all this activity he prepared our contributions to the potluck dinner on Talulah Ruby this evening; a curry. Needless to say, another fun evening, with lots of laughter, was had by all.
