Holiday is over!

Well we had been having a little too much fun hanging out on deserted beaches and catching fish so I have been a real bastard and decided to Haul out. Julie is very excited, almost as excited as me:) 

The slime in really taking over, it's outta control. We scrubbed the bottom 2 weeks ago and it's already 3 inches long and spreading everywhere. It's only been 15 months since I did it and was hoping it would be alright till the end of the year when we get to South Africa but no chance. 

We are now in Malé the capital of Maldives and there is a choice of 2 boatyards with travel lifts suitable for lifting yachts. We have chosen the smaller, cheaper one called Universal. The other one Gulf Craft,is very big and busy. Looks great, very professional but also straight accross from were they burn all the rubbish for the whole population here! Pretty rank to say the least. So we are going over to the other side and even have a good view to look at while we are sanding. 

We went into town yesterday for the first time and it's full on. Very hard to believe after being at the other small quiet islands. The island is just crammed with high rise buildings, no land left at all. Anyway we have worked out the city and found everywhere we needed to find to get paint and all the other stores we need. It's not all that cheap though but luckily we don't need a lot of stuff. We did manage to find a couple of good fishing tackle shops were we did spend a fortune!

So the past couple of weeks before arriving here we were just hanging out back at our favourite island Difuri for a week and then we did an overnight sail south to Thulusdhoo. Thulushdoo is a great anchorage, not to busy and there is also the CocaCola factory there which we had the grand tour of, pretty interesting. It's only 12 mile north of Malé so there were even a few tourists staying in guest houses and also on jet skis from the next island down which is owned by Club Med. 

I had a surf for the first time in 10 years at a left hander, didn't do much good and was pretty sore the next day! Hopefully find a nice right hander somewhere after we leave here.

We did also manage to buy drinking water from a hose on the wharf which was great. 600 litres for $5 so we even did some washing. The 2 pairs of boardies and 1 shirt I had been wearing for the last month were getting pretty sticky and salty!

So we will be hauling out in a couple of days and will hopefully be back in the water a maximum of 5 days from then. I'm sure we will appreciate the beaches that much more then!