More Mayhem at the Airport

Mike (June 1st): OK... So I ordered some new sails from Doyle in the Barbados and had them delivered to the BVI. That was the plan. What happened was that nobody seemed to know what happened to this sail. So finally, we got a notification from the airline that they located the shipment and we could pick them up from the airport. We picked up a mooring ball in Trellis Bay, hopped into the dingy and headed for shore. For those who may not know, Trellis Bay is right at the airport. In fact, the runway flight path goes right across the bay. Anyway, Alison and I realize as we got to shore that we didn't have our departure clearance papers (the sails were sent 'Yacht In Transit' for tax exemption reasons) and now have to go back to the boat to get it. While the time burn is only five minutes, this is gonna hurt. We finally get to the airport and get the airline's agent who pops back into the customs area. The world is golden... not. She pops back out at what is now 4:33pm and tells us that customs has gone home at 4:30pm. D'ya see how those five minutes figure in? Anyway. She chearfully also tells us that customs will reopen for us on Tuesday, this being a long weekend in the BVI. This is not good since this is Friday! Ouch! I throw a foot stamping episode and she relents and fetches us a customs agent who normally works arriving passengers and not cargo. Since the shipment was labelled 'Yacht In Transit', no customs or duty charges apply, so she was prepared to release the sail shipment to us. But where was it? A search of the unclaimed baggage was no joy. Next was a call to the cargo terminal, but more no joy since they'd already left. By chance, Alison saw a box sitting by a baggage conveyor at arrivals and inquired. There it was! It had been sitting on the floor for almost a week. Amazing that no one messed with it. The box was heavy, so I hijacked a porter cart, loaded it on and proceeded to head out to the airport back to the bay. I told Alison not to look back for fear someone was noticing the heisted cart. We got to the dock, unloaded and returned the cart to the airport with no-one having taken notice. Whew!