The Early Bird Gets the Worm

In our case it's an Indian, The Indians to be exact.

Sunrise over The Indians

Whenever we've been down here before we've cruised past the Indians looking to pick up a mooring but never a spare was to be found. We spent the night on the north shore of Norman Island and then bright and early just after 6:30 we made the short hop over to a prime day mooring on the much sought-after real-estate.

Just to catch you up on the last few days, here's a little pictorial history.

Henry and his man-size rum

Just to make all at home sick at the price

Morning walk down Maho Beach

Yep, we're hiking up to the top of that hill

The steep start to Cinnamon Bay Trail

View from America Hill, Mowzer bottom left

What an amazing place to build a house

Sunrise - Sunset - another perfect day

BVI refreshments

Sitting at West End in a beautiful warm breeze and the best tropical cocktail, a Painkiller sitting on the table in front of me. Ahhhhh, the true cost of wifi, only $15.00!  Yikes.

We spent the night at Maho Bay on the north shore of St. John and once the sun came up it warmed up considerably from the last couple of days. We looked off the back of Mowzer and there above us were some ruins sitting high atop a hill. We said to ourselves, lets hike up there! The ruins are the remains of an old guest house or a rum runners headquarters, or maybe both. We made it up to the top and were treated to fabulous views (pictures of which I will have to post later since I don't have our camera with me right now) right across Mary Point, up to Jost and Tortola and the Drake Channel.

Back to Mowzer for a light lunch and then over to Soper's to check in to the BVI. After a long hot trek up to the Digicel outlet to discover that we have to go into Road Town if we want a data card for the iPad or Blackberry, we've come back for a cold drink.

Ironically as we checked up on the latest news, we note that Zerotocruising, who we hoped we might meet up with, must have passed right by us yesterday and they are now on the east end of St. Thomas. As they say, "ships in the night".

Cloudy Arrival

We're back and Mowzer looks great as usual. As Jan said in the office, "Welcome home!"

This is our trip of no plans. No big excursion or itinerary set, just two and a half weeks of relaxation and island hopping, most likely up over to St. John and then up into the BVI. With the time that we have and provided the winds co-operate we might make it up to Anegada and we're also quite interested to return to North Sound which we have missed the last few times we've been up that way. We've read of some interesting hikes up above Gun Creek or Biras Creek so we'll see what we can discover.

Surprisingly it is overcast and quite cool here today. I think they knew on the plane cause they froze us out on the flight down; no need to prepare us for the blast of hot air as we exited to the runway. Of course it's all relative and we still appreciate that there is no snow on the ground and no frost to scrape off a windshield.

Henry getting us all shipshape

FP Owner's Rendez-vous

Fountaine-Pajot will be hosting their third Owner's Rendez-vous in November and we're booked to go!  Not quite sure what to expect but hopefully it will be fun and maybe some of the other owners from CYOA will be able to make it over to St. Martin for the get-together.

A Visit Overseas

When Caitlin chose Mowzer's name, she harkened back to a book our kids enjoyed when they were young, called "The Mousehole Cat". I talked about this in one of my earliest postings, but alas the YouTube video has been removed so it is not quite so informative as it once was.

Recently, we had the opportunity to visit with Caitlin while she is away studying in England. On a week off, we asked her where she would like to go while we had a car at our disposal and she selected the village of Mousehole in Cornwall, down at the south-western tip of England.

Land's End in Cornwall

It turns out the book is almost like a travel guide for the village; it was as if the paintings had lifted themselves from the pages and appeared before our eyes. There was the protected harbour with its massive break walls, surrounded by homes and shops, linked together with impossibly narrow lanes winding up the steep hillsides. Being the only visitors in town on that grey January day, we cozied up to the fire at The Ship Inn for a warm pub lunch and could easily imagine one of Mowzer's line curled up on the hearth.

In the final spirit of exchange, we even found Caitlin's namesake tucked away for the winter. The circle seems to be complete.