Getting Our Life Together

There are a number of things that I have learned so far:

1. As soon as you open a hatch to cool down the boat, it starts to rain. As soon as you get them closed, the rain stops.

2. You can have too much wind to sail.

3. When one thing is fixed, another needs attention.

4. It is amazing how dirty a boat can get.

5. You have to be careful on your navigation chart plotter as it will route you over a rock.

6. You can learn a lot by reading a manual.

7. The wind will take a boat and move it in a direction you don’t want to go.

We have had a great week. We went over to Cooper Island in BVI and spent a couple of days there. It's a beautiful spot with a great restaurant, but a little rolly.

After that we motored to Soper’s Hole to be closer to St. Thomas and clear out of BVI customs. It is good to see Soper’s Hole getting back to somewhat normal after Irma. It was devastated by the hurricane.

We motored to St. Thomas with a stiff 22 knot wind at our backs. It is good motoring down wind, but tough to sail. We did our first solo docking, which went ok. As Captain Ron says, “Don’t worry captain, we can buff out those scratches.”

We spent a couple of days in Crown Bay Marina provisioning and getting the boat organized from our shopping excursion. It's a very nice marina with a good bar and restaurant within 100 yards of our boat. I guess that will be my judge of the quality of the marina. The marina is right next to the dock for cruise ships, which is very intimidating.

Got off the dock at Crown Bay with no issues. We motored to Caneel Bay in St. John’s into the wind. It was a steady 25 knots gusting up to 30 knots. No sailing for us.

That is it for now. We are having a lots of fun. Some duties are more fun than others.

Here's a photo of one of our neighboring cruise ships.

Our neighbor in Crown Bay

More neighbors in the ‘hood.

Joe’s first mast climb to replace a lightbulb

Joe did almost all off the grilling the entire time we were on the boat