Late but not too late?

Apologies to all readers for the delay in posting this update. Poor internet and just too many things to do!

We left Barbuda reluctantly and had a good sail to St Maarten. Too little wind and after a while experimenting, we settled on the spinnaker alone as the best set up. Still, this only gave us 4 knots and this meant we had to anchor at a small island off St Barts overnight before going on to St Maarten. The island had been home to goats but they had eaten everything down to the dirt and left a lunar landscape with no plants or goats or anything at all!! Up very early as it was a very rolly anchorage and not somewhere to sleep and relax.

Arrived in St Maarten to find that they had started charging for anchoring at Marigot so quickly moved into the lagoon. It's more protected and calm but no place for swimming!

Lots of our time was then spent organising work on the boat and buying things to use later (lots of storage issues for Karen!!). We also made a few new friends (since departed across the Atlantic) went to a birthday party and had a pretty good time.

After two weeks we headed off to the BVI and had a wonderful sail there. We almost arrived too early to get through the passages between the islands but actually arrived there with just enough pre-dawn light to see by. We spent 2 weeks in the BVI and had a few lovely days, some excellent snorkelling and found some lovely, quiet anchorages. The down side was that we also had lots a rain, too much wind and usually both.

We had to head back to St Maarten to get an arch built onto the boat to hold 2 wind generators and 2 solar panels. We'd arranged this before leaving and so reluctantly sailed back. For the first time we had a continuous head wind so had to beat into the wind tack after tack. What was a 70 mile 11 hour sail there was a 160 mile 30 hour sail back!!

It took about 3 weeks for the work to be fully completed and get the gadgets installed and working and just at the end of that period, the generator broke down (again!!!!!). With some advice from locals and a borrowed tool or two, I have managed to fix it myself so no repair bill but it's still taken a week to sort out. Overall, we have now been here 4 weeks and now we are cleared out and are looking forward to leaving.

St Maarten is a very friendly place and the other cruisers are most helpful and friendly so we have had some good times with friends and time to relax. There are also major shopping advantages like no tax, import duties or customs clearance. One of our major purchases was a 73 pound anchor (replcing the 44 pound one we had) from the US which cost only $88 to ship in including delivery. We also got our full medical kit delivered from the UK so we are now truly ocean capable and independent for most purposes.

As some people already know, we are not crossing the Atlantic so our departure from St Maarten is southward down to Trinidad for a lift out, some bottom painting and some more maintenance before heading to the ABC islands and central america. It looks like our path will be west through the Pacific rather than east to the Med!!

Next update from Trinidad before we fly home for 3 weeks.