Silver Tern is almost ready for her first cruise. We have been working overtime to get her finished enough for the April 10 high tide that allowed her to float off the beach at Tim's Beach Boatyard and into Port Carmen Bay. We anchored out for a night and then motored down to Cebu Yacht Club where we are spending a week. We are finishing some critical projects like installing lifelines and winches outside, & lights and plumbing inside.We are also receiving visits from different government inspectors such as customs for the boat and it's contents, maritime industry authority for being a newly constructed vessel, immigration for our crew, & quarantine for pests. They want to make sure we are taking all the duty-free items we shipped in back out of the country, and that we are not smuggling any drugs, guns or young girls. Mostly we are finding officials that are willing to speed up the bureaucratic process for extra fees, and we are paying them after reducing their requests a bit.
The reason we are rushing so much is that the three Mumby boats that were built by Harwoods only had one year to keep the duty free items we sent up from Australia here before being required to pay fees or exit the country with the boats. So all three of us are headed to Kudat, Malaysia. And all three of us will then return to the boatyard after and continue our fit out. Steve and I are looking forward to heading home soon after that in early June. We are exhausted but have a great 3/4 finished boat to show for it.
