Happy New Year!  We hope that the coming year brings joy and contentment to you all. 

We have had a long period of silence on the website, for which I apologize.  I have been missing it terribly, but due to a major computer malfunction, we haven’t been able to post any updates.  Much to our dismay, although not surprisingly, we discovered that our wonderful little laptop computer doesn’t do too well in salt water!  We had a little mishap while bringing it into my parent’s hotel room the other day.  We did manage to save a bunch of information, including all of our pictures, but the laptop itself is toast.  We are using our backup computer, which has all of our navigation software on it, luckily.  After 20 years in the computer business, you would think Joe and I would be better about keeping a regular backup for our data.  Anyway, I managed to connect and download the whole website from the remote server and I am back in business! 

We had a wonderful phone call this morning from Francois and Lisa Dunoyer to announce the birth of their baby daughter, Francesca!  Congratulations you guys.  What a wonderful way to ring in the New Year.  We are so happy and excited for you.  We can’t wait to meet the latest addition to the Dunoyer family!  

While Cois and Lisa were in the throws of labor and delivery, we were rafted up with our friends on Blueprint Match and Jaimie.  Cenou joined us for the party, but they got boxed in where they anchored and didn’t want to try to move their boat.  We are at the Bitter End, on the Northeastern tip of Virgin Gorda.  The harbor is crowded with boats of all shapes and sizes.  We stayed on our boats for the evening rather than go into the resort for the party.  It was a blast.  Johnny had just gotten a projector to attach to his laptop so he was showing movies for the kids on Jaimie.  The adults mingled on Zia and Blueprint Match, sharing a potluck dinner and champagne.  MOST of us managed to stay up until midnight!  Can you guess who didn’t quite make it?  Of the girls, Juliana was the realistic one and climbed into bed at about 10pm.  Cassie was determined to stay up until 12 and she almost made it.  She finally passed out in the salon at about quarter of twelve.  It didn’t seem fair to let her sleep through it after making it so long, and I tried to wake her up at midnight but she wouldn’t budge.  When I carried her down to her cabin she woke up a little confused and protested going to bed before midnight, but I wished her a Happy New Year and told her she didn’t miss a thing. 

I wish I could have captured the scene in the harbor around us.  Boats were anchored all over the place.  A squall came through at about 9pm and we noticed a charter catamaran dragging at an alarming pace.  They were nowhere close to us, but Claude ran out to see if he could help.  Apparently they were not even aware that they were dragging.  The little monohull on a mooring ball directly behind our flotilla was understandable nervous.  They started yelling at us at some point during the squall.  We set a fourth anchor off our starboard bow just as it started gusting up to 35.  We might have dragged a little bit before that, but the new anchor caught after a minute and we didn’t budge for the rest of the evening.  I can only imagine how the couple on the boat behind us felt, with three boats, totaling 75ft worth of beam threatening to bear down on them.  We were not worried, however, with our anchor alarms set, and all of our main anchors well buried in sand.  I hope our neighbors didn’t stay up all night worrying about it!

Since I last wrote, we had a wonderful 10 day visit from the Santa Fe Boyle family.  Joe’s brother Mike, his wife Susan and their kids, Maggie (17) and Piper (20) joined us in St. Thomas on the 21^st of December.  We made a quick provisioning trip to Charlotte Amalie, and then made our way to Christmas Cove where they enjoyed their first night on the boat.  It is such a treat to share our experience with others.  It helps us to appreciate how spectacular it is when we see it all again through their eyes.  The whole family adapted very well to the cruising life.  Susan made herself right at home in the galley, forging ahead with meals and snacks.  Everyone pitched in with the dishes and clean-up.  Of course Cassie and Juliana were in heaven having all these extra people around to cater to them.  Uncle Mike has always been a favorite and he didn’t let them down this time, either.  He showed up with his very own portable “spinach store.”  This is his code name for the candy store.  He always took the girls out for candy whenever he came to visit us in Annapolis and he didn’t want to miss out on the smiles and cuddles he inevitably got, so he stocked up a bag and brought it with him.  Of course, he would have gotten plenty of smiles and cuddles regardless, but Mike loves to spoil his nieces.

We came up with a loose agenda based upon meeting a group of Caribbean 1500 boats in Maho Bay on St. Johns for Christmas Eve.  We snorkeled around Waterlemon Cay in Leinster Bay and then moved over to Maho Bay for three nights.  There were a dozen or so boats from the rally there and we had a great potluck on the beach for Christmas Eve.  Jaimie and Cenou came as well, so we were surrounded by many friends and family.  It was a perfect way to spend the holiday.  The girls each drew pictures of Christmas trees which we hung under the clock in the salon.  Santa had no trouble finding us, although Cassie was worried how he was going to slide down the mast without getting hung up on the spreaders.  Apparently he had no problem with it, though, as he loaded up the stockings and added to the pile under the Christmas tree very generously.  Gran and Gramps had also stocked us up on gifts for Christmas so the girls kept opening present after present.  It was a typical Christmas morning, despite our radically different setting.  As we were making phone calls home to family, a pair of dolphins swam right by the boat in the middle of Maho Bay.  They hung out amongst the boats for a couple of hours, delighting all the cruisers.  What a wonderful first Christmas for us on the boat.

After three nights in the same spot, it was time to get moving!  We checked into the BVI at Soper’s Hole, where we enjoyed a lunch on shore and a little shopping.  After a few hours on land, however, everyone was ready to get back to the boat.  It is amazing how much hotter it is on shore, without the breeze constantly blowing across your face.  We made our way up to Sandy Spit, a favorite spot off of Little Jost Van Dyke.  Jaimie was there waiting for us.  They had picked up some mutual friends in St. Thomas and we had arranged to meet them there.  Bonnie and Ron Steele actually introduced us to John and Po Martin in Annapolis before we left this summer.  They had spent a month on Jaimie in Greece over the summer and eagerly arranged to come visit them in the Caribbean over the holidays.  It was great seeing them and catching up on all the news from home.  We miss our old gang of friends and it made us feel a little closer having the Steele's to hang out with. 

We spent the night anchored off the little island, relatively exposed to the weather.  The forecast was for very mellow conditions so it was perfectly comfortable.  Last time we were there, I missed the chance to walk around the deserted island so I jumped in first thing in the morning and swam to shore.  It was a spectacular feeling of peace and solitude, listening to the waves crash and watching the sun grow higher in the sky as I walked around the island totally alone.  Good thing I went when I did, too, because an hour later it looked like a new Harry Potter book was going on sale on the island.  There must have been 20 boats that pulled up and anchored around us within the next hour.  I guess the busy season had really begun!

We sailed over to Monkey Point for a little snorkeling, followed by dinner out at the Last Resort in Trellis Bay.  Mike Boyle is a huge fisherman so we had been dragging lines everywhere we went.  We caught a nice little mackerel leaving Trellis Bay the next morning.  In order to get the really good fishing, however, we were going to have to start getting moving a little earlier.  Feeding times are sunrise and sunset so you rarely catch a fish between the hours of 10am and 4pm, but that didn’t keep us from trying.  After hitting the Baths, we sailed around to Cooper Island.  We got lucky with another fish on the line, or maybe I should say half a fish.  We reeled it in to discover that something had taken a good-sized chunk out of our catch.  It was bitten clean through just behind the dorsal fin.  Wow.  It was still a nice sized fish, however, so we filleted it up and added it to our stores. 

To accommodate the four extra adults on the boat, we deployed a little two man tent on the port trampoline as the “fourth cabin.”  It worked out well, except that with two people sharing the air mattress inside, you tend to roll into each other towards the middle of the tramp.  We’ll work on a fix for that before we’ll need to use it again.  By the end of their visit, all the Boyles had figured out the sleeping arrangements that worked best.   It was sad to see them go, as we dropped them off in Charlotte Amalie to catch a taxi to the airport on Friday morning, but we all have wonderful memories of tacos, snorkeling the Indians, Painkillers, impromptu dance parties on Zia, sailing and motoring along the spectacular coast lines of St. John, St. Thomas, Tortola, Jost Van Dyke and Virgin Gorda, and sharing stories and dreams with family and friends. 

If you have read this far, you deserve to hear the full story of the “computer incident.”  Mom and Dad had taken off for the airport, and checked out of their hotel room.  Mike, Sue, Piper and Maggie weren’t due in until midnight, so we suggested they book a room in the same hotel for the first night.  We spent the morning cleaning the boat in preparation for our guests, and then went on errands.  Juliana and I took the “dollar taxi” into Charlotte Amalie to get her ears checked out by a doctor/friend of ours.  Joe and Cassie went into Red Hook, a 10 minute cab ride away, to pick up some last minute supplies and Christmas presents.  Joe and Cassie were back at the hotel by about 4pm, and Joe decided to check into the room for his brother and use up the last day of internet access we had bought while my parents were in town.  He left the girls in the hotel room and went to get the computer off the boat.  I had taken the backpack that we usually carry it in with me on my excursion, so he covered the laptop up in plastic bags to protect it from rain and spray.  While tying up the dinghy, he set the laptop down on the dock; right on top of the dinghy line.  A little surge came in and jerked the dinghy and consequently the line, which knocked the computer right off the dock and into the water.  AHHHHHHHH.  Joe made a lunging dive onto the concrete pier and caught it about a foot under water.  Of course the plastic bags might have done a decent job of keeping off rain and spray, but they merely prolonged the dunking by holding in all the salty sea water until Joe could pluck the drenched computer out of the bag.  I walked into the hotel room and was confused by the sound of the blow dryer coming from the bathroom.  I asked what was up and he said "You're not going to like it."  I walked in, saw the laptop in pieces and immediately realized what had happened.  I needed to take a few minutes by myself before I could face the reality of having lost our computer, but in the end, no amount of bitching and moaning would change the facts, so I accepted it with as much grace as I could muster.  We had a backup computer with all of our navigation software loaded on it already, the web site was all saved on the remote server, and we still had a good chance of saving our hard drive with all of our pictures and other documents.  In the end, we were able to get most everything off the hard drive, although it now seems to be on the fritz again.  And I'm overjoyed to have the website up and running again after two weeks of silence.

I wanted to also share the story of Juliana and my trip into Charlotte Amalie to the doctor's.  We had met Adam Shapiro and Pam Berkowski through our friends Eben and Wendy Block.  Adam and Pam moved down here from the DC area four years ago.  She had been a big wig in the Clinton administration and he had worked in a couple of ENT (ear, nose and throat) practices around the beltway.  When the republicans won the last election, they decided to make the move to St. Thomas.  Her family owned property on St John and they traveled here frequently and figured it was a perfect excuse to get out of the rat race.  He has an ENT practice in Charlotte Amalie and she has retired, for the time being.  They have a 5 year old boy and a 2.5 year old girl.  We had spent the afternoon on the beach with them while my parents were here.  I mentioned Juliana's ears, which had been bothering her for a week or so by then.  I had checked them out with my otoscope and reported that they were full of all sorts of stuff and I couldn't see past it to the eardrum.  He recommended that I bring her in for a visit so he could clear out all the stuff and make sure there wasn't a serious problem.  He squeezed us into his very busy schedule on Tuesday.

Taxis are ridiculously expensive in the USVI and we decided to take the local transportation into the city.  "Dollar taxis" operate between Red Hook and Charlotte Amalie on a regular basis and this is how the locals all get around.  As the name implies, it costs a dollar to go anywhere it stops.  We shared a cab from the hotel, which is not on the taxi route, into Red Hook where we dropped of Joe and Cassie.  Our driver offered to take us further down the road and drop us at a bus stand.  We hopped on the crowded, open-air, safari-style bus.  You can tell the dollar taxis from the private ones as they are always packed full.  We weren't exactly sure where to get off but with the help of a few nice locals, we were able to find our way to the doctor's office.  Dr. Shapiro was great and I was very happy to leave knowing that we had a professional looking out for us.  He prescribed some antibiotic drops for her and no swimming for 10 days.  It was tough, but we made it a full 8 days without putting her head under.  I thought that was pretty good, considering our circumstances.

An hour trip on a crowded, hot bus, topped off by an hour's wait in the crowded doctor's office on an empty stomach, a hot walk back to catch the bus, unsure of where we were going and Juliana in some pain the whole while could have been a miserable day.  I was amazed to find myself having a great time.  The whole scene was a nice change of pace.  We got a chance to get in touch with the local culture a little bit.  I got to spend some time alone with Juliana.  We both got off the boat and away from the Secret Harbor Beach Resort, where we had been hanging for the last 10 days with my parents.  I would normally have been stressed out about all the wasted time spent waiting for this and that and all the things I should have been doing instead.  What a treat to be able to actually enjoy the adventure of it! 

We are talking about our plans.  We want to make the trek east to St. Martin/St. Barts/Saba but we need to wait for a good weather window.  It is apparently a challenging trip against the wind and the current and you need to time it for a light wind day.  The "Christmas winds" which should fill in soon and blow 25 to 35 knots for weeks at a time have not yet materialized. Claude is checking the weather as I sit writing the update and he says Thursday looks good for the trip.  We have no confirmed guests until the end of the month when my sister Kim is talking about meeting us.  We told her to book a flight to Puerto Rico and we can tell her where to go from there as the time gets closer.  It is fun not to have a schedule again.   

I'll work on the photos next and get them posted in the next day or two.  It is so good to be back writing again.  I have missed the feeling of being connected to all of our friends and family through the website.  We miss you.  Happy New Year.