New Year's Eve in St. Thomas

We just got back to the boat after having a good meal of oliebollen! When we arrived in St. Thomas the first time we discovered a Dutch flag on a boat and of course we had to go and see who they were. Hans de Bruin (from Holland) and his American wife Joy have been sailing close to ten years now and one of the first things he said, that he has made oliebollen every year, even when he sailed alone.

When we were going back from St. Croix we called them to see if they were still here and that was the case because he had come down with the flu, so we decided to come back here and have New Year's Eve together with Hans's oliebollen. It was very nice, it is amazing how you meet people on your trip and immediately feel a connection. It was a good time and I wish for everybody to meet so many nice people in their lives.

Happy New Year everybody, Ria

The captain and first mate

Jacques showing off his legs.

Ria's new outfit.

Dolphins

The dolphins were with us.

Leaving St. Croix

Jacques got his certification back

Jacques has already asked me several times if I have told everybody that he earned his certification as “head”master back and that he now also wants to get a certification as “light”master! I am doing this now, the toilet is working fine, nice job mate! Although I am getting very close to my degree as assistant head master!!!!

Of the lights we bought two years ago, about seven and not cheap, none of the switches were working anymore, so Jacques soldered by-pass switches from Radioshack. When we get back home in May we will receive warranty replacement but we will keep the Radioshack switches, just in case. Soldering on a rolling boat really deserves him the title of "light" master.

Talk to you all soon, Ria

It was the day before Christmas

It looks like the weather has decided that we will spend Christmas in St. Croix, that’s fine with us; we will go to our own special restaurant (because it’s the only one who has internet) and have a nice dinner. It still is for me not really a Christmas feeling, sitting outside in the sun and warm water around you and your wish is to go to Buck Island to have a snorkel trip.  

We have about 24 Christmas songs on the iPod and I am playing them like crazy (Jacques is still holding up, but is getting close to throwing the whole iPod overboard), I have bought a battery driven string of colored lights that looks really cool in the dark! But as a northern person the white and the cold are part of the whole Christmas feeling. So we are creating a whole new and different Christmas time and it is in fact wonderful that we are still flexible enough to do that!! And when we are even older and cannot do this anymore, I probably would wish for a nice snorkeling on Christmas.

We are in good spirits and we hope all of you feel the same, lots of love and Christmas spirits where ever you celebrate!

Merry Christmas!!!

Revoking

I am sorry to say this, but I had to revoke Jacques title of certified headmaster.
He gets one more go at it today, the febreze is ready!!!!!!!!

Ria

The "Head" Master

On a boat the toilet is called a head. In one hull we had an electric one. It did not work all that perfect and used power, of which we need to be very careful with. So we bought on old fashioned one in Puerto Rico and installed it a few days ago. After a few days it started to show difficulties in the pumping department (I would say the most important job of a toilet). 

Yesterday we wanted to attack the problem; the booklet (yes I cannot live without booklets) gave as a solution: the joker valve!!! Okay!! But my mate thought he knew what it was, unscrewing the pump showed the valve was flipped back, so we were very happy for such an easy solution, but….it was not the problem. 

Now it got complicated, we disconnected the hose from the toilet, which started immediately a little bit of an odor problem; the “Febreze” had to work overtime, it had a hard time living up to his promise “it will eliminate all odors and leave a breath of fresh air.”

Then Jacques wanted to take the hose of the plastic pipe leading into the holding tank and then the fitting broke. I, yes me!, had the great idea of using a rubber hose that would go over the outside of the elbow fitting. But for that needed some stuff. Dinghy down, walking to a hardware store and we found a perfect rubber sleeve that would go precisely over the elbow and for the connection to the hose Jacques had a bunch of fittings from older plumbing leftovers that had the same size as the rubber hose. 

Then we took the task of flushing out the sh@!#t from the area with a small pump hang into the water outside the boat and a hose to pump seawater into the bilge. After that we used the pump the other way round to pump the sh@#!t back into the sea.

At five we tried it out and see: everything was working with no leaks. This really called for a super big and sweaty high five and for a coke with rum to flush the bad smell down. Now Jacques is promoted to certified head master but I hope he will never need to use these skills again.

Ria

St. Croix, Christiansted sooo scary!!!!

We had hoped to be able to sail with spinnaker to St. Croix, but there was no wind at all, therefore we had the most quiet crossing of our whole trip. I could take a long shower on the back of the boat, what normally is impossible when you’re crossing part of the ocean. And Murphy ’s Law came true again, you can have the whole day no wind and close to the harbor it started blowing. 

This time it came from a big cloud over Christiansted. We slowed down till the rain was gone and we could safely see all the buoys to get into the harbor. There was not much place to anchor here, so after 2 hours driving around and discussing we ended up near the entrance on a mooring ball. Not very protected and it started really blowing in the night. I was up at four and went to look outside, everything seemed fine, but I had in my head a plan for when something went wrong.

Jacques got up at six and checked, still everything okay, but 6:15 there came a big cry for RIA!!!!!!! I could hear something was very wrong, the line from the mooring had broken and we started to drift, the motors were running in no time and while Jacques started to get all the ropes on board, I steered the boat away from other boats and the wall, but the steering wheel did not move very much, so I steered with motors and looked backwards and saw that the rudder crossbar was attached with two ropes because the rudders were moving in the waves. I had them loose very quickly (broke half of my nails) and the boat was under control!

We put the anchor out and went first for some much deserved coffee. The rest of the day we stayed on the boat while it was blowing 25+ knots. Later in the afternoon Jacques swam out to check the anchor but couldn’t see anything because of the sand whirled up in the water. At least the entire area was sand ground so we were confident that with over a hundred feet of chain in about 10 feet of water under the keel we had a good feeling.

Christiansted seems to be a very nice place from the boat so today we will go on land and hope to do some chores. As a Dutch saying goes:  “Luck is with the fools” we are thankful that we are fools.

Talk to you later, Ria

St. Thomas

We are now more than a week in St. Thomas and this is a very busy harbor. There are daily arriving at least 3 big, big cruise ships, several small ferry boats bringing people somewhere are drifting by and then we have the noise of the street; the cars do not have much space to let the police pass, so the emergency vehicles are constantly driving with their loudest equipment on. 

Having said all the negatives first, this is a very nice and roomy harbor, every boat has a lot of space and there good dinghy docks. Our first trip to land was to downtown, is old and very cute but only made for the tourists. It has really very nice old buildings, but it is a watch store, a jewelry, a liquor, a watch, a jewelry etc.

So the next day we went to another part of town, where everyone else lives and works and there were normal grocery stores, all in short walking distance to the dinghy dock. We are being lazy, doing one thing a day and reading: Jacques has discovered reading this time and is already busy with his fifth book!!!!!!!!

Wednesday there will be north wind and we intend to go to St. Croix, it is a little bit out of the way so we hope to find a more quiet  spot.

We will report again from St. Croix.

Ria