Towards the end of yesterday Richard decided the best thing for us to do looking at the weather now – its flat calm out there for 5-700nm to the west and north – is to motor on up to “Cabo San Lucas” which is right on the tip of Bahia California (for you guys out there who´s geography isn´t that great, that’s still Mexico, there´s a finger hanging down on the western edge of Mexico, it’s the very bottom bit of that). That would mean continuing to bash into windward for another 3-400nm and/or motoring through doldrums. It puts us a bit further north, it’s a different place to see and hopefully better for provisioning e.g. the guys ferried all the jerry cans around the road to town yesterday afternoon to fill up with diesel as the fuel station just outside the marina has no fuel (it´s out of season so they only have petrol for the water taxis but no diesel).

What it does mean is inevitably further delay on actually getting to Canada, we´re not even half way yet, if we are it´s only just!!!

So the plan for today is for Huw and Richard to go and pick the sail up and Bernice to go and buy provisioning for a few days. Easy, right? You´d have thought so… Except as Bernice is shopping the guys are traipsing from ATM to ATM as Richards card won´t allow him to withdraw any money. After 4 attempts reasonably locally, the sailman – Bob, agrees to run Richard to a neighbouring town, well a good hours round trip by car, to see if that works, leaving Huw in town looking for Bernice.

Bernice meanwhile has finished shopping and returned to the boat. Huw works this out and heads back there too. Which is kinda where we are for the rest of the day. We do some internet, Huw looks at the engine – oh yeh, forgot to say, it decided not to work this morning, some oil issue, Port side – and we wait. And wait. And wait. When Richard finally returns he has still no money, there´s no apology for the delay/situation, no plan. He gets on to the bank via skype; they have no clue and just suggest trying different cash machines and different amounts. Oh look isn´t that what he´s been doing all day?!

We leave him having a stout conversation while we go for a walk and an ice cream. When we get back there is still no plan. It´s now 1630 in the afternoon, it´s unlikely we´ll be going anywhere today. Sound familiar? We resort to Cabeza de Mierda and try and stay calm. Richard goes back out to find his glasses he thinks he´s left them in Bob´s car. He comes back about 30 mins or so later, he´d only got as far as the hotel – tried their cash machine, it ate his card!

Hhmm… Banks don´t you just love them?! We carry on playing cards while he calls the bank a 2nd time. By the time he´s finished it’s after 1900. He then decides to go track down his glasses and let Bob know what’s happened. We carry on playing cards, till it´s cool enough that a shower makes sense. We´re just out of the shower when he returns, he offers up a tuna curry for dinner, we were toying with some kind of stir fry but if he´s offering to cook well great. We continue with cards – can we just say it’s quite one sided when there´s only two playing!!! – while he showers and then cooks. It´s after 10pm by the time we´ve had dinner.

What´s the plan? There must be a plan now? The plan is, there is no plan! Other than Richard is on a mission to get his card back, he learnt from the last call to the bank that there is a branch (HSBC) in Manzanillo, back down the coast, not sure how long it would take on land, probably an hour or more each way in a car. Then there´s the bank whose ATM ate his card, that’s in another town even further away… tomorrows mission then.

But what does that mean in terms of us, of leaving, of free time. Can we make a plan to do some sort of excursion tomorrow at the very least while he sorts this out? You´d think so wouldn´t you? Should we even hang around?

When he came back from Bob´s he´d revised his plan, to go up to reception first thing in the morning and get them to call the bank, see what can be done to get his card back, when the machine might be emptied next. Then if no joy, go to Manzanillo and take out a whole load of cash… So at the very least we have to wait till he´s been up to the hotel to know what kind of delay we are to expect….

You´d think he´d have another source of cash. Ok so this is his business account and that’s the one that he wants to use, but at the expense of further delays here, is it really worth it, couldn’t he just transfer money to another one and use that temporarily?