It's been rather quiet on the blog recently, but with good reason. Boy have we been busy!
We kicked it into high gear last week and have finally knocked out the last of the boat jobs that held us to the CYOA docks.
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| Sunrise on another day at the dock. |
Along with all the boat work we'll also admit that we've been having a lot of fun. The Sunday before U.S. Thanksgiving we went over to Honeymoon beach on Water Island and experienced a real local hangout with Jay & Deb, Paul and Laurie. We were treated to a ride over on one of the Sea Tow boats; much better than the bumpy ride it would have been in our little dinghy.
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| Captain Paul whisked us across the bay in the Sea Tow boat. |
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| A lazy hang-out Sunday on the beach. |
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| It was hot, so he dug a hole and lay in it - how creative. |
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| Paul & I sat and chatted over a cold beer while ... |
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| Henry chatted up Bubbles! |
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| End of a perfect day. Now to get the boat... |
Thanksgiving arrived on Thursday and John & Joanne very graciously invited us to their place up on the north side of the island for the feast. Erica gave us a ride and we joined Paul, Nancy, Jay & Deb for a wonderful meal of turkey with all the fixings. John & Joanne's house is perched on the cliffs overlooking Hans Lollick and the BVI with stunning views to the north-east. It was quite amazing looking down on the islands that we have sailed to many times and watching the winds and currents swirl through the channels.
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| John & Joanne dishing up appetizers on the deck. |
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| Looking east to the BVI and overlooking the new house. |
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| Jay, Paul & Henry swapping stories. |
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| Deb seems to think its good to the last drop! |
The boat work however has continued, the solar panels are all installed up on the bimini and pumping energy into our batteries throughout the day. So far, and it is early days yet, we find that by lunchtime our batteries are back to full and for the afternoon we just stay topped up until sunset. Obviously there will be cloudy days when we won't be able to capitalize on all that free sunshine, but we'll definitely take it when we can get it.
This morning we finally got to dress up Mowzer with her new graphics. Now, when we sit in an anchorage we won't look like other charter boats, we'll have a little distinction. Totally happy with how this little project turned out!
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| Now she's quite distinctive. |
Now that we're done with these major projects it is time to start watching for a weather window to make our way to St. Martin, and it looks like the perfect one is coming our way this weekend. Along with that it will be a full-moon on Saturday so we are hoping for a relatively easy crossing. We will leave the dock on Wednesday, make our way up to the BVI and then continue to watch the weather for a period of calm in the winds. We're heading due east which is right into the trade-winds so we'd like either a shift in the winds to the north or a reduction to less than 10 knots to ease the 100 mile passage.
Woohoo!! Here we go!
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| A Great Blue Heron gets ready for an evening of hunting from the docks. |
