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It seems that the reports from More Mischief are on island time, so, sit back and relax while Michael does some hands on work… and you thought that it was all play, read on.
12/15/2013 – Marigot Bay, St. Maarten to the USVI’s
The jobs continue on the boat. Michael has now removed and replaced the cracked window on the starboard side of the boat we have put in a new evaporator and the fridge is now performing admirably. We awoke this morning to pouring rain and guess what… the window did not leak.
There seems to be no end to the boat jobs when it comes to regular maintenance… every four days you must make water and while making water you may as well do laundry. While the generator is running you may as well plug in every gadget you have that needs recharging. While you have the power supply, you may also run the vacuum and clean up inside. That’s a lot of work for one day. By the time the laundry is dry and put away again, it’s time for happy hour somewhere.
Other projects including installing two new used radar chart plotter heads that are color and replace the monochrome ones that were not easy to see in the bright days here in the Caribbean. Many thanks’ to Peter Briffa our home based electronic guy who was able to locate the older units.
We also reworked the wheel and brake to move more smoothly. We have finished the installation of an underwater light (a gift from our son Adrian), which is great for night fishing as it really draws a crowd.
We repaired a dingy patch, which had decided to come off. We resealed the teak cockpit and polished the gel coat.
Finally our guests Tina and Steve arrive from the great cold north and we proceeded to do the tourist visitation of St. Martin including the local sights in both the Dutch and French sides of the island and an introduction to our friend Shrimpy who runs the local yacht services and Laundry (a key find for cruisers in St. Martin).
After a few days it is decided to move up to the Virgin Islands where we visited the snorkeling sites around St. John. This is a protected area so there are lots of marine life to be seen including sea turtles, starfish, barracuda and many colorful tropical fish.
This was followed by a sail to Christmas Cove, St James for more snorkeling and dogging raindrops.
Next we moved to Charlotte Amalie the capital city of St. Thomas where we anchored in the protected anchorage of Long Bay. Here were able to see the onslaught of cruise ships up to 5 a day now that it is in tourist season.
Here Steve and Tina left us for the cold of Canada and to save up money to bring his boat south from Nova Scotia. We installed the new plastic mirrors that they brought us from Canada. We are also now focused on gel coat work on the deck.
It is Christmas season now and we attended the lighting of the Christmas lights one night and the lighted boat parade another night. Neither had the traditional Christmas music we are used too but it was great fun anyway and we met many new folks cruising here for the Christmas season.
Sailing With Devious, 2014 