Monday morning we weighed anchor and came in to the fuel dock to take on fuel and water - 75 gallons of water and 11 gallons of diesel. Looks like we are good on engine use but need to conserve water more carefully! (This was for 3 days of 5 of us aboard.) At this point the ship's crew compliment consists of: Dave, Capt., Lisa, Admiral, myself, navigator and sail trimmer, and Henry & MaryAnn Marchi (Lisa's parents) crew and deck hands. We cast off lines and motored out of Charlotte Amalie harbor about 10:00 AM. Once safely out of harbor, we raised sails and sailed very comfortably @ ~120* off the wind. Wind built to ~18 kts and Dave suggested we reef. As we were negotiating that process for the first time, a squall hit with heavy rain and winds to 27 kts. We successfully tucked in a reef and sailed down wind, careful not to gybe, hitting 10.2 kts max. Not bad for our first trial! IT lasted only a few minutes. We continued under single reef and got hit with a second squall but rode it out just fine. After that passed, things looked better so we shook out the reef as we gyubed for the Western end of St Thomas. After coming through the Virgin Passage onto the North side of the islands and assuming the course we will keep for the next several days, we experimented with various sail combos. We settled on just main during day and then just gennie at night as we were too deep to fly both and gennie, while not quite as big as the main is much easier to tame at night if hit by a squall. Fortunately, that was not tested and we had a beautiful night. We did 3 hour watches and everyone seemed to be fine with it. This morning we are off the NW coast of Puerto Rico, running the engines to charge batteries (they are quite tired and need frequent charging, but we use the engines for a bit more speed while charging so it is all OK.) Lisa is going to be posting to this blog as well so you can get her view too.