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December 11th, Sunday - St. John, USVI
As we wait for a
weather window to take the dinghy around the corner into
Cruz Bay to clear customs into the USVI, I thought I'd start an
update. We are all on pins and needles, awaiting
Gran and Gramps Fisher's arrival this afternoon.
We decided to clear out of the BVI yesterday and make
our way over to the USVI a day early so we would have plenty of time
to get ourselves situated and the boat cleaned up before we
go to meet my parents at their hotel. It has been
raining on and off since we finished breakfast, so we
might just have to go for it. A little fresh water
rinse would do us all some good!
The customs thing is a
bit of a drag, but you just have to remember the rules
and plan around them. In the BVI, just the captain
is required to show up with all the passports and fill
out the required paperwork. You have to
clear both into and out of the country. If you
know for sure when you are leaving, we just learned from
Captain Glenn, you can do both in the same trip.
In the USVI, everyone on board is required to present
themselves with their passports to the Customs officer
but you just have to clear in, not out. You are
allowed to be in the country's waters for up to 24 hours
before you clear in, but you aren't allowed to go ashore
until it is done. We arrived last night around 6pm
and are going in this morning to clear in. This is
the first time we have left the task of clearing in
until the next day.
Yesterday I was feeling a little
under the weather and stayed out of the water the whole
day (I know, I know, poor me!). I'm not sure what
the issue was (no, I wasn't hungover) but luckily it seems to
have passed. Joe and the girls did go snorkeling
after school and even spotted a lobster. Joe was
mighty tempted to grab it but we decided against it.
Technically, we have to have a fishing permit in order
to pull anything out of the water, and I'm not even sure
that you can take a lobster, even with a permit. At
any rate, on our way out from Sopers Hole after clearing
customs, I threw a hand line out for kicks and just as I
unwound the last loop off the spool, I felt a bite.
Luckily, it was a little one, since I hadn't tied off
the bitter end yet. It turned out to be a little
kingfish, we think. We need to get ourselves a
fish book to help identify what we catch. Being
unsure, we took a picture, filleted it and froze it so
we can make sure before we eat it. It's small, but
enough for a meal for the four of us.
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Otherwise, we had a
great time at Skylar's 7th birthday party. We
arrived at Norman Island to find Jaimie and Cenou rafted
up together front and center by Willy T's. John
Martin is an amazing mariner. He instructed us to
raft up on his starboard side. He helped us with
our lines and then hopped into his dinghy. Coming
around to our bow, we dropped our anchor down to him.
With a line wrapped around it, he chugged upwind towards
the beach with it. We let out about 125 feet of
chain before he dropped it a little off to our starboard
side. We pulled in some chain until the anchor
bit. The guys all climbed onto Jaimie to set a
second anchor out in front of her. There was a
nasty mooring ball that we kept falling back onto and
John wanted to pull the whole raft-up forward and away
from the offending mooring ball. Once the second
anchor was set, he fired up the engines and nudged all
three boats forward until we were well clear. All
the time, John knew that he was going to be the first to
leave in the morning. The next day, he untied both
Cenou and Zia. We both drifted aside on our own
anchors and he sailed away. It was amazing that it
all worked as planned.
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The raft-up was the
perfect platform for a birthday party. The kids
all ate hot dogs and potatoe chips on Jaimie and then
tromped over to Zia for dessert. The carrot cake was a
huge hit. I actually used an old recipe that I got
from my mom. Before the girls all went off to
college, she typed up a bunch of our favorite recipes
and I still have the original document to this day.
Carrot cake has always been one of my favorite and it is
a well used recipe. I added it to the recipe page
at the request of the guests at the birthday party.
Thanks mom.
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By the time we got
school done the next day, there was no time for a swim
or even a visit to the famous Willy T's before we took
off to meet the Quantum guy, Kevin, to fit the modified
main cover. We anchored out by the cruise ships
and dinghied into the marina where the girls and I hung
at the pool while Joe and Kevin went back out to the
boat. The wireless connection was working well so
I emailed and tried out our new VoIP service, Skype.
It is an amazing thing, to be able to call any land or
mobile phone number from your computer for $0.012 cents
a minute. Unfortunately, the couple of phone calls
I made were only partly successful. People could
hear me fine, but I couldn't hear them. Actually,
I heard about five words and then is started to sound
like a soundtrack played at the wrong speed. It
was a little frustrating but still fun to feel a little
closer to home. I'm hoping to have more success
with it in the future. You can actually talk
computer to computer for free. I've been told that
this doesn't work as well, but haven't tried it yet.
Check it out at
http://www.skype.com/products. Our Skype name
is zialater.
So, now I am sitting at
the Secret Harbor Beach Resort (www.secretharbourvi.com)
awaiting mom and dad's arrival. We had lunch at
the resort restaurant and are so far are very impressed.
They offer wireless access for $20 a day so we are going
to try to negotiate a deal for 10 days. If so,
we'll be able to play around with Skype and emails until
our heart's content. We'll try to get in touch
with as many of you as possible, so drop us an email
with your phone number or email address if we don't
already have it.
Lots of love,
Christy, Joe, Cassie and Juliana
Next entry
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Many thanks to our
friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up
the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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