Hello everyone! We left Antigua ten days ago and have been working our way west. First stop - Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of St. Martin, where we made our first major provisioning foray in preparation for the upcoming Atlantic passage. Cruisers always try to fill up the boat where it's cheapest, and Sint Maarten is cheap indeed, but especially by Caribbean standards. Two grocery carts full to the brim, mostly of costly items like cereal, crackers, cookies and canned goods, cost me $298. Just for comparison, at the Bitter End resort on Virgin Gorda a small box of Cheerios costs $7.25; the same box costs $6.50 in Antigua. On Sint Maarten, I paid $3.40 for a large box - similar to US prices.

After a lovely overnight passage, we reached Virgin Gorda and have been cruising around the BVI for the last week. Yesterday we sailed into US waters and cleared US Customs at St. John to take care of the other necessary task before departure - US mail. We haven't had a real mail drop since I attended SailExpo in January because the mail my father sent before Christmas took six weeks to reach Antigua and we've been too much on the go to plan another pickup. We also needed to have some spare parts shipped to us, which would have resulted in Customs hassles if not duties and fees on any other island. Here we walked in to Connections, the local mail drop for cruisers, and walked out with three big boxes sent priority mail a week ago for a less than ten dollars each.

We'll start looking for a weather window to depart for Ireland in another two weeks. We haven't made any decisions about stopping at Bermuda or the Azores - both are comfortably close to the rhumb line. We'll let the weather dictate when the time comes. The ~3,200-mile passage could take us anywhere from three weeks to five, with a great deal dependent on how the springtime North Atlantic treats us and whether or not we decide to make any short stops. Right now, we're at the stage of excitement and trepidation we always reach before a major passage - eager to get underway but checking and re-checking everything to be sure we're really up to the ocean's demanding standards. We're not yet stowing and organizing the boat for passagemaking, but we are checking every inch of the running and standing rigging, hoisting and inspecting our storm sails, re-fitting locks on hatchboards and lockers unused since our last passage, and so on.

Soon, we'll be exchanging all our shorts and tee-shirts for thermal underwear and wool watch caps. After our five month summer, we'll be going north into spring.

Fair winds and good spring sailing to all - Beth and Evans