Administrative Stuff

Sometimes it feels as if all we do is administrative stuff. Take insurance for example. We have for a long time been insured with Pantaenius who are one of the best leisure marine insurance brokers. However, cover provided is dependent on the area you intend to cruise. It is easy to get cover for European coastal waters down to Gibraltar but now of course we want to extend that. We are therefore getting a pro-rata extension to cover Morocco, Madeira and the Canaries. The renewal comes up in August so they will duly take a wodge of money for the same cover for next year. The complicated bit comes in that underwirters will not cover "small" boats in the Caribbean so we are going to have to go third party only once we leave the Canaries.

Therefore, when we come to leave the Canaries, we will have to notify them and we will get refunded the remainder of our hull cover policy which can then be held on account till we reach European waters again. All a lot of fun. I should point out that Pantaenius have been extremely helpful all through this and I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone contemplating a trip like ours.

Next, we have also to look at getting our Emergency beacon or EPIRB serviced which has to be done every five years. There is a service agent in Gibraltar but that is not convenient for us and there are none in the Canaries where we will be when the service time comes up. Therefore, we are going to have to send it back to the UK with one set of visitors and get another to bring it out to us with a new battery in it. I know that it is a very sophisitacted piece of equipment but I would have thought that a replacement battery could have been made a user serviceable job rather than one that entails sending it to the factory!

Oh well, at least that is all we have to do and we are now all but ready to head south to Morocco now! We will go across to the marina in Cadiz tomorrow to do the last bits of shopping we need to do.