We just had our last dinner at the Dutch Bank Cafe…Thurang was our server and he sat us up on the balcony with a view of the sunset overlooking the Trincomalee Bay….Slow flight in plain view! VIP status : )
Making last minute calls to the US… 
Last Sri lanka curry…for now! 
Trevor, Thurang, and I…see that huge white plastic bag? That has 3 pizza, and a yummy local “noodley” dish for passage food…can’t beat that..trying to use up our Sri Lanak Rupee..isn’t a bad thing : )
I have that feeling like I am not ready to leave this beautiful place…but our 30 day visa is running out..and the weather isn’t looking any better than right now!
Originally we had planned to extend our visas here to conserve funds as we “blew our wads” (sorry not very PG) in Langkawi with the termites and in Thailand with all the repairs. But, stupid us…. we assumed!
To extend here in Sri Lanka, the port fees will be another $100, agent fees, another $100. Extension for immigration we have to travel to the city of Colombo…which is not a huge deal…it’s just cost of a van/taxi and travel time to get there, stay the night possibly a few nights to commence immigration procedures, at a higher “Big City” rate…all in all we estimate it to cost us about $500 usd. The Maldives, with agent and port fees, cost about $300 to check in/out and stay in the country for about 1 week (7 days). Staying in the Maldives for a month (30 days) would cost us just over $1000 usd. We had planned to stop there to re-feul and pay the $300 anyways…so add in the cost of extension of our visa here in Sri Lanka…..would almost cost us the same to stay for 1 month…so it goes!
Additionally, the northern hemisphere in the Indian Ocean is going through it’s “transitional” period where the winds shift from NE (what we have now and what we want to go to the Maldives) to the SE (not so good as the winds could be on our nose). As soon as we learned the cost of extension herein Sri Lanka…we looked at weather forecasts and saw that in about a week…the wind is going to start to shift to the SE. It will take us about a week to sail from Trincomalee, Sri Lanka to Uligan, Maldives…so if we left today, we would possibly experience winds coming directly at us.
What makes this decision even harder is that we promised our cruising buddies on SV Alexandra and SV Kokomo, who are doing a land tour as we speak, that we would watch their boat and pick them up in our dinghy when they arrive back at the bay on Sunday, March 24th. What is a girl to do?!!!! Follow the wind or keep to her word….crap….!!!!!
Lars and Maria 
Peter and Donna
So the decision was made….leave when the wind tells you to.
We have been in contact with SV Alexandra and SV Kokomo in regards for plans for them to get back to their boat and check on battery status before they return home….I don’t think they are upset but I am sure they are surprised! It never makes me feel good not to follow through with what I say I will do.
SV Alexandra and SV Kokomo…we hope you are enjoying your land tour and we wish we could of spent more time with you here…as it is so lovely. We hope you will understand where we are coming from. We hope to see you in the Maldives sooner than later : )
It’s official…we are cleared to go..
Sandeep…thank you for such a seamless clearance process. We sincerely hope to keep in touch and we will keep the word out to come to Sri Lanka! 
Shalika, you are the kindest person with the sweetest smile! So helpful and accommodating. We hope your advancement in GAC is fast and look forward to keeping in touch.
Next up: Maldives….