Maldives here we come!

Well all went well yesterday clearing out. Relatively painless and only took a couple of hours with the officials all very friendly a genuinely interested how we enjoyed our stay here. I wasn't really all that excited about sailing here to Sri Lanka to begin with. Read a lot of horror stories of dodgey fisherman approaching yachts and harassing them from 200nm offshore and loads of touts trying to rip you off ect ect. But to be honest we couldn't have met nicer people. Almost everyone is super friendly and even the touts just leave as soon as you show your not interested. Thought it would be like India were they just try and wear you down, this is nothing like. A lot cleaner, didn't even see one rat! The tourist beaches are great with lots of little beach bars with cold big bottles of beer between 2-3$ And curries for about $5, fresh fish for under $8. In the mountains it seemed to be cheaper again and just beautiful. So we highly recommend this place to sail to or come for a holiday.
The harbour is ok but is quite dirty. They are building a yacht marina at the moment which will be great. Don't know what services they will have but the people here seem to be very good workers so if they do boat maintainance and spray jobs I think it would be a good place to come to for work done. The main gate is a pain in the ass. Security with guns and custom officials. They all have a little bit of power and show it. Check your bags coming in. We had a load of beer in a Tuk Tuk and turned into a big problem. Apparently you can only bring in what you can carry, so one case at a time. Can't bring diesel in either, have to buy it through an agent it was about $1.20 Aus a litre. The good thing about all the security though was we had no problem at all about leaving the boat worrying about anything getting stolen which was great. Your also only allowed to go to 5 designated ports if you are in a yacht and Galle is the main one. To check in you need an agent which cost $225 which includes 1 month stay. If we wanted to sail say to Colombo we would have to check out of here and then appoint an agent in Colombo and go through the same process there. The harbour master has given us permission though to anchor here outside the port to clean our boat which is great. The bottom is filthy and to do dive or even swim in harbour you need the navy to supervise and of course pay some $, and besides that the waters filthy. The fresh water in the harbour showers is drinkable so you can fill your jerry cans from there no problem. Supermarkets in town are great. We went crazy in
Thailand and Malaysia thinking there wouldn't be much available here but there is. Everything quite reasonably priced except cheese which for Australian cheddar was almost $40 for a kilo! We found some local cheese which is pretty good for $16 a kilo though. Hardware and paint shops everywhere for all that sort of stuff and I think you could get most things fixed. There is boat lifting and hardstand that has a couple of yachts on it also is you needed work done. The weather has been perfect with offshore light winds every morning and a very mild sea breeze in the afternoon with not one squall the month we have been here, a couple of showers but that's all. Renting a scooter is the go for getting around and costs $5-7 a day. The drivers are pretty crazy but are good and you get used to it quite quick. Very erratic driving especially the local busses that just pull out to overtake and don't care at all about oncoming traffic, they just hold their horn down and go for it and everyone just moves out of there way! Just make sure your always over as far on the left of the road as possible. The food has been good but know were near as exciting as India. The curries are very tasty but all quite similar and there aren't all that many local food restaurants. I think the locals mainly just cook for themselves. Julieta did a cooking class with my sisters and got a few good tips so we have been cooking a  lot of Sri Lankan styled curries on Sunflower in their traditional clay pots.
Anyway the bottom is all clean after 2 hours diving and scraping. I have a 12volt dive hookah that makes it very easy. The growth in the tropics is unbelievable. I painted the bottom in November 2012 with suposably very good anti foul but it still needs to be cleaned every month or 2, the prop a lot more often.
So we are all stocked up and good to go and will hopefully be in paridise in 4 days! We plan to go to the top of the Maldives to an island called Uligamu about 450nm away. We have a great forecast with 10-18kt NE winds. Will see how we go:)