de Carnival is fun, don't stop de Carnival" Children's refrain


July 21, 2008

We went to Customs to make crew changes as Annette and Terry are flying home tomorrow and Wayne P arrived and moved onboard. We made those adjustments and I told them we were leaving 0400 Tuesday and they allowed me to clear out at the same time, otherwise we would have had to fill the same form out in quadruplicate for a third time in the morning.
Wayne P and I took a local taxi ($1 USD) to downtown Castries where Carnival was in progress. It is extremely colorful with loud music blasting everywhere (both Carnival and the local bus ride). I got wet with misting machines but it felt great in the tropical environment as we drank the local lager; Piton. Everyone was drinking something and everyone was convivial. Many of the girls were whining (not what you think) and there was an underlying faster than usual up tempo calypso beat which you could feel in your gut.
We are ready to leave early in the morning (island time) but the fuel dock does not open until 0800 and we need to check out with the marina first. About 1600 miles to Ft. Lauderdale and we are hoping to use the spinnaker for the entire run. The only weather system we are watching carefully now is coming off of North Africa: it looks like we have time to get to FL before anything can get to us.
I have been away four months and am getting home sick for Donna, the puppies, my friends and the Yacht club (not necessarily in that order, but it looks about right).
We are working out some warranty issues for Ft. Lauderdale and hopefully that will not hold me up too long.
I will keep a log and update when I get to FL.